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Subject: monsoon's losses in CCT5

Author: Scott Gasch

Date: 23:59:44 01/19/03


I'm looking back over the games monsoon played on the first day of CCT5 (esp the
losses to Hossa and Bringer) and thought I would post some positions I thought
were interesting.

Round 1 monsoon had white against Hossa and played it's favorite tournament
opening for white, the Ruy.  ECO called it the Ruy: classical defense, Benelux
variation.  Monsoon was out of book, though, at move 8 though and proceeded to
make two mistakes in the forms of bishop for knight trades.  Normally reluctant
to do this, I can see the engine's reasoning in both cases -- 9. Bxf6 opens
black's king fortress while 12. Bxc6 gives black a damaged pawn structure.  The
position after the recapture is:

[D]r1bq1rk1/p1p2p2/1bpp3p/4P3/8/5N2/PP3PPP/RN1Q1RK1 w - - 0 13

Monsoon likes white here because of the open black king, black pawn defects etc.
 However I was very worried at this point about the two black bishops on what is
looking like it will be a very open board and wondering how monsoon can manage
to trade one off.  Black will also get a passer on d no matter how you slice it.
 I think black may be better here despite the king position.  Yace, crafty and
warp favor white still but not nearly as much as monsoon did.

Hossa loses one of the doubled c pawns on move 18 but has a dangerous d passer
by then.  The queen trade on move 17, though, might have favored black.  A
critical position (or, a critical mistake by monsoon) was move 23:

[D]4rr2/p1p3k1/1bN2p2/4P1N1/8/3p4/PP1RbPPP/2R3K1 w - - 0 23

Believe it or not, because of the open black king and extra white pawn material
monsoon still thinks white is ahead here and plays Ne4 giving up the e pawn (and
giving the d monster eventual support) in what I believe was an effort to get
rid of a black bishop.  Here's the plan:

Ne4 fxe5 b4 Rf4 Nc5 e4 Nd4 Bxc5 bxc5 e3 fxe3 Rxe3 Nxe2 Rxe2 Rxd3 Rxa2

Better here might have been exf6+ Nf3 Bxf3 gxf3 Re2 Rxd3 Rxf2 Nd4 Rxb2.  Or it
might be too late for white already by now.  One thing monsoon needs help on in
the eval, I think, is knowing that advanced connected passers are even worse
than it thinks when the defendign side only has rooks and maybe a minor since
rooks are terrible with connected passers.  The game is over once the e pawn
gets up to support its comrade on d.  Monsoon did manage to get a bishop off the
board but only at the expense of the critical f file.  It resigned here:

[D]8/N1p4k/8/P3r3/1P2pr2/3p2KP/3Rb1P1/8 w - - 0 34

Because after Kxf4 black wins easily with: e3 Ra2 d2 Nc6 d1=Q Nxe5 Qd4+ Kf5 Bd3+
Nxd3 Qxd3+ Kf4 e2 Rxe2 Qxe2.  Nice game, Hossa.  I was glad to learn Steffen had
a hardware upgrade for CCT5 so monsoon at least had an excuse.

In game 2 monsoon played Bringer and lost again.  Monsoon was again out of book
early, move 8.  8. d6 looks solid to me though and monsoon is happy about the
open white king position.  It proceeds to ruin attacking prospects with a queen
trade on move 15.  This is the second game in a row monsoon has taken what I
thought to be a bad queen trade.  It has also nowhere good to put it's king and
ends up leaving it uncastled blockaded behind the central pawns.  Here's the
position at move 28:

[D]7r/1p1kpp2/p2p3P/3P1b2/4PBp1/2p2P2/r1P3P1/2KR3R w - - 0 28

Monsoon is still calling this even despite its entombed bishop at f5 and the
huge white passer on h.  I thought black had attacking chances earlier on but
the open white king position and the attacking pawn at c3 are less useful now
that the rest of black's army is traded off and monsoon is overestimating the
severity of the white king position.  Here's an important position:

[D]8/1p1k1p1P/p2p4/8/2r1P1p1/2r2P2/b1PR2P1/2K4R b - - 2 36

Monsoon has managed to get the bishop out and played Rb3 here threatoning Rb1#
forcing white to check the black king with Rxd6.  This leads to an endgame where
monsoon has a rook and a minor against white's newly promoted queen.  Here's the
position at 41:

[D]8/1p3p2/p2k4/8/2r1P3/5P2/b1PK4/7Q b - - 0 41

Instead of Rb3 yace thinks black should have played Rc8 defending the passer and
leading to a position like this:

[D]7R/1p1k1p2/p2p4/8/4P1b1/2r5/2PR2P1/2K5 w - - 0 40

Crafty, though, seems to agree with monsoon's line.  Either way looks bad for
monsoon but to me yace's line is less-bad.  Anyway, monsoon opts for the queen
vs. rook+minor line and the queen dominates allowing the white majority on e and
f to create a passer.  It's basically over here, which is near where monsoon
resigned:

[D]8/1k1r1p2/pp2P3/1b3P2/5Q2/4K3/2P5/8 b - - 0 50

Well I was in none too good a mood by the end of this one but I'm glad to say
the next seven rounds went better.  Maybe that old man's advice about losing the
first (two?) games of a swiss was good.  Monsoon got chompster and phark, two
new engines, in the next two rounds.  It won both games and played frenzee,
Sune's engine, in the last match of the day.  (P.S. frenzee has some wild finger
notes, have a look at
http://www.chessclub.com/cgi-bin/finger/finger.pl?handle=frenzee)

I think frenzee lost the game because it aggressively pushed it's king shelter
pawns in an attempt to storm monsoon's king position.  Here's a position:

[D]r1bq1rk1/pp6/2n2p2/2ppPppp/3P4/P1P2NQ1/2P2PPP/R1B1R1K1 b - - 1 14

Here monsoon was expecting f4.  Crafty/yace prefer either Qc7 or g4.  g4 is what
frenzee played which allowed Bh6 and the white counterattack.  The next few
moves are all aggressive for white:

14 ... g4 15. Bh6 Rf7 16. exf6 Qxf6 17. Re8+ Kh7 18. Ng5+ Kxh6 19. Nxf7+ Qxf7
20. Qd6+ Kh7 21. Rae1

Monsoon trades two minors for a rook but ended up with an active attack.
Black's army is still at anchor in the harbor and can't defend the king:

[D]r1b1R3/pp3q1k/2nQ4/2pp1p1p/3P2p1/P1P5/2P2PPP/4R1K1 b - - 3 21

The black queen falls here and though it's a rook and minor vs. monsoon's queen,
the queen easily traps the rook and minor on the back rank and wins the game.

Monsoon had a really exciting draw against Comet in the second day but I'm tired
of looking over games for tonight... maybe I post part 2 tomorrow.

Scott



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