Author: Jim Monaghan
Date: 11:51:19 06/21/01
I came across this engine game recently from Dann's Battle of the Crowns Winboard event: Time control was Game in 60 minutes. [Event "Computer chess game"] [Site "MWMCKEE"] [Date "2000.11.20"] [Round "3"] [White "SOS"] [Black "TCBishop"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "A00"] [Opening "Dunst (Sleipner-Heinrichsen) opening"] [Variation "Romford counter-gambit"] 1. Nc3 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. e4 Be7 4. d4 exd4 5. Nxd4 Nf6 6. Bf4 O-O 7. Qd2 Nbd7 8. O-O-O Nc5 9. f3 Ne6 10. Be3 Nxd4 11. Bxd4 Be6 12. h4 Nh5 13. Qf2 Re8 14. g4 Nf6 15. g5 Nd7 16. f4 Bg4 17. Be2 Bxe2 18. Qxe2 Nf8 19. h5 Ne6 20. Be3 c6 21. Qg4 Qc8 22. f5 Nc7 23. g6 fxg6 24. hxg6 h6 25. e5 d5 26. Bxh6 gxh6 27. Rxh6 Qd7 28. Rdh1 Bf6 29. exf6 Re1+ 30. Rxe1 Rc8 31. g7 Qxf5 32. Qxf5 Re8 33. Qh7+ Kf7 34. g8=Q# 1-0 At first I was puzzled how quickly TCB was rolled up because at first glance I could not find a definite error. A blunder that you could point to as a "smoking gun" as it were. Then it hit me that to arrive at this position: [D] r2q1rk1/ppp1bppp/3pbn2/8/3BP3/2N2P2/PPPQ2PP/2KR1B1R w - - 0 12 TCB had made 4 moves with his queen knight N-b8-d7-c5xd4 only to exchange it. This resulted in Black being behind two tempi in addition to the first move dis-advantage. I feel that this is the reason for Black's loss. A series of tiny mistakes which build up to a lifeless position. In the diagram, White has a ready-made plan to get his K-side pawn majority rolling. Black doesn't have the usual counters available (thrust in the centre or a counter-attack on the queenside). His game will slowly deteriorate from whatever assessment an engine analysis will give from this point. 12 ... Nh5 was also weak as this was only a temporary restraint, but it's hard to suggest anything better. Here is a diagram from slighly later in the game: [D] r1q1r1k1/ppn1bppp/2pp2P1/5P1P/4P1Q1/2N1B3/PPP5/2KR3R b - - 0 23 I guess my points are just 1) to illustrate the difficulty in dealing with minor mistakes that can build to a horrible position (better was 7...Nc6 instead of 7...Nbd7 as the doubled c-pawn would have generated a half-open b-file for counterplay), and 2) the usual problem of pawn storms. Cheers, Jim
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