This was my second round game in the 2008 Great Lakes Open against the section's highest rated player, 10-year old Epiphany Peters.  How good is Epiphany?  She is the first tournament game that I have analyzed on ChessMaster R10 where the computer agreed with 100% of her moves.

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.f4 Bg7.  As pointed out by one of the past blog replies, the Austrian Attack is a very effective line against the Pirc.

5.Nf3 Bg4.  I'm almost always weary about playing my white bishop to g4 in this opening because I don't feel comfortable replying to h3.  I thought it might be effective here to keep the queen on the defense of the knight... which of course was countered on the very next move.

6.Be2 O-O 7.Be3 c6 8.Qd2 b5 9.a3 a5 10.h3 Bxf3. Was not happy about this exchange, but didn't want to lose  tempo with e5 looming.

 11.Bxf3 Nbd7.  Okay, so I just played this whole line to prepare for e5, and I knew that playing Nbd7 will weaken my pawn structure to allow a win on e5, but I still played it.  CM10 does not call this a big blunder, but I believe this lapse in my concentration is where I lost the game.

12.e5 Nd5.  I was searching for how to limit my loses to just one pawn, and this is the best I could find.  Anyone see something better?

13.Nxd5 cxd5 14.Bxd5 Rc8 15.e6 Nb6 16.exf7+ Kh8 17.Be6 Nc4 18.Bxc4 Rxc4. In my post-game analysis I wondered if I should have taken with the b-pawn instead.  What do you think?

19.O-O Rxf7.  20.c3 d5 21.Rae1 Qb8 22.Rf3 Bf6.  CM10 kept waiting for me to play b4, which I never did.  I didn't really consider this move during the whole game, and I think this might be a weakness in my game.  I am going to start looking for these type of pawn moves.

23.Bf2 Rc8.  In retrospect, Rc6 saves me a tempo.

24.Re6 Qb7 25.Qd3 Rc6 26.Rxc6 Qxc6 27.f5 g5 28.Re3 Qc4 29.Qxc4 bxc4.  Epiphany traded queens quite quickly here, and I didn't think it was that easy of a decision.  She may have felt that her Queen had limited range, and this was a good way to stay ahead.  I think this gave me some real chances on the b-file, but she defended this very well.

30.Re6 Rf8 31.Rb6 a4.  I was so impressed by Epiphany's play in this game.  Time and time again she shows an understanding on what the real weaknesses and threats are in the position.  She could easily win a pawn here, but she carefully first protects her weakness on b2.  She knows she can win another pawn at any time.

32.g4 h5 33.Bg3 h4 34.Bh2 Ra8 35.Kf2 Kg8.  I was worried about something really small here.  I wanted to make sure that my king did not block my bishop to move back, but had I calculated a little deeper, I should have seen that staying on the back rank gave Epiphany a chance to defend the b-pawn.  If I play Kg7 instead, I think I have much better chances for a draw.

36.Rb5 Ra7 37.Rxd5 Rb7 38.Rd8+ Kf7 39.Rb8! Rxb8.  Beautifully played by white, and it is all but over now.

40.Bxb8 e6 41.Kf3 exf5 42.gxf5 Ke7 43.Be5 Kf7 44.Bxf6 Kxf6 45.Kg4 ... and I resigned since I can't protect my remaining King-side pawns.

This was typical of all my games at the Great Lakes Open this year.  I was never down by more than one or two pawns in any of the games, but I could only muster one win and a draw.  I have another very complex and interesting game in Round 4 that I will try to post later this week.

This is my game against Scott Faust (1488) at the Universal Spring Swiss Tournament on Nov. 2-4.  I had the black pieces.

1. c4 d6.  Although I had never played Scott before, I knew he was going to play the English from seeing him reading the English Opening book between rounds and watching one of his previous games.  My plan was to transpose him into the King's Indian to see if it got him out of his comfort zone.  This was simple plan for me because I have been playing the Modern opening on almost all my games where I had black. 

2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. e4 Bg7 5. h3 o-o 6. Bd3 c5 7. d5 a6?    White played d5 really fast here.  I was surprised because I have played numerous games where I thought d5 was a mistake by white, blocking his light-square bishop and opening the door for black to attack c4 and the queen-side.  However, my move 7 was not very inspired, and I think I could have played more actively and tried to take the momentum.  I was hoping to follow with b5, but this was too far off.

8. Be3 Nfd7.  I wanted to take advantage that his light-square bishop was blocked, and I thought I could continue to lock it down with Ne5.  I had the right idea, but this was not the way to do this.  Now it is obvious to me that f4 not only forces my knight away, forces me back to d7 or to trade for his bad bishop.

9. Qd2 Qb6 10. Nge2 Ne5 11. o-o Nxd3.  I had a tough choice here.  I realized after the fact that my knight at e5 was not going to be able to block his light-squared bishop after white plays f4, so when he played Nge2, I saw that I had a chance to win the b-pawn if I traded my knight for his bishop at d3.  It took me a long time to come to this decision because I had to make sure that I could extract my queen after I took the pawn.  I saw that he had Rb1 followed by Rb3, but I saw that I could move my queen safely to a3 then a5 and then retreat back from there.  What I did not calculate was how white might use his advanced rook on the now open b-file against me.

12. Qxd3 Qxb2 13. Rb1 Qa5 14. Rb3 Qa5 15. Rfb1 Qc7.  I did not see this move back on move 11, but I saw that I could defend this easily.  My concern was how to unbottle my position quickly now that I had given white so much tempo to develop an attack.

16. Qd2 Re8.  I knew that white's plan was to trade bishops at g7.  I wasn't sure if I wanted that or not.  By playing Re8, I was giving myself a chance t0 play Bh8 if I wanted to save my bishop.  But that presented other problems, since now I would have no other way to extract the bishop at h6.

 17.Bh6 Nd7.  I decided to use the tempo to unbottle my queen-side.

18. Bxg7 Kxg7 19. f4 Rb8 20. Ng3 Nf6 21. Qf2 e6.  This was the start of my plan to take control of the queen side.  My plan was to challenge the pawn structure which is now weak at c4.  However, I under estimated white's attacking chances after the next move.

22. Rf1 exd5 23. Nxd5 Nxd5.  This move caught me by surprise.  Why would white force a trade while down a piece?  I did not notice that it opened up the a1-h8 diagonal that his queen could use to gain a tempo by checking my king.

24. exd5 Kg8?  I was too cautious here.  I had the initiative, and I gave it back to white by making this passive move.  Part of my indecision here is that I had no good way to deal with 25. f5 ..., except maybe 24. ... f5, which blocks in my bishop.  In retrospect, 24. ... f5 would have been better than Kg8.

25. f5 Re5 26. Re3! Rxe3 27. Qxe3 Bxf5??  Up to this point, I think the game was fairly even, but white has all the attacking chances, although black has good chances to draw.  This blunder was so terrible, I could have probably resigned after I played it.  My thought was that I could not stop f6 followed by Qf4, Qh6, Qg7#.  I did not see that I could have simply played Qe7 and Qf8 to stop the attack (and still protecting the d6 pawn).  Even though I probably had little chances for a win after these moves, I could have still held on for an end game, where I had at least even chances.  I'm up a pawn, remember?  The rest was well played by white.

28. Nxf5 gxf5 29. Qg5+ Kf8 30. Qh3+ Kg8 31. Rxf5 f6? 32. Qxf6 1-0.

After running this game through ChessMaster 10, I see that the game was pretty much even right up to move 27.  If I could have had a little more time to analyze the position, maybe I could have seen how to stop the mate threat without making this blunder and reached an end game in my favor.  my mental error was that I was not looking to get to an end game.  I could only see that I had to stop checkmate, and that I had no attacking chances.  What are your thoughts about this game?

St. Clair met its goal to be one of the top ten teams in the state by placing 7th overall out of 17 teams in the Nov. 10 Scholastic K-12 Club Championship in Flint, Michigan.  On the team were Cody Trombley (12th grade), Nate Mireau (11th), Bobby Spicer (10th), Raphael Rabillas (10th), and Mike Dodea (10th) in his first tournament.

The team played well and still has room to get even better.  The scoring ended up as follows:

Cody Trombley  W-W-L-W-W (4-1-0)

Nate Mireau W-W-L-L-L (2-3-0)

Bobby Spicer L-L-W-L-W (2-3-0)

Raphael Rabillas L-L-L-W-W (2-3-0)

Mike Dodea L-L-L-W-L (1-4-0)

Of note: Cody Trombley ended up tied for 3rd place (9th place overall based on tie-breakers) out of 77 players.  Raphael Rabillas had his best tournament with two wins, beating a player 500 points over his rating in the process.  Bobby Spicer matched his best tournament score with two wins.  Mike Dodea got his first tournament win.

This was my first game of the tournament against John Whitworth who was rated 1721. My rating was 1525 at the time. I was playing black, and I played a variation of the Pirc opening.

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Be3 Bg7. I go off the book opening here to play a variation without c6. By placing his bishop on e3, John caused me a lot of trouble in my opening since I like to play the variation Nbd2 and c5. After this tournament I realized that even though I had practiced the Pirc many times prior to the tournament, I had not studied enough transpositions of the opening, and I was reluctant to go away from the moves with which I was most comfortable. I really had to look at this part of my game after the tournament.

5. Nf3 O – O 6. Qd2 Bg4. I thought long before making this move. This was outside of my usual opening, and I was not sure how it would play out. I was worried about the bishop on e3, and I was struggling to find the right moves if c5 failed me. Even though I considered many possibilities for John's next moves, I did not look very long at the simplest moves, Ng5 followed by h3.

7. Ng5 Nc6. I am on new ground here, having never played my knight to this square in this opening.

8. h3 Bc8. I think it was obvious here that my 6th move was an error. Now I had no good square for my light square bishop, since I was determined to save the d2 square for my knight in the event of e5. In retrospect, I can’t believe how much I let Be3 take me off of the game I had practiced so much the last few months.

9. Bd3 b6 10. O – O – O Bb7. So I end up with the light square bishop fianchetto, which I normally use anyway, except with two tempos down. Also, my slow development and lack of any threat allows John to castle queen-side, which has caused me problems with this opening in the past.

11. h4 Nd7. I am really suffering from Nc6. All my usual plays with this opening are bumbled because of the tied up c5 pawn. I am really struggling to make any kind of threat. Even the discovered attack on d4 is easily countered, and actually helps white’s development of his bishop to Bc4. I think a better line would have been 11. … Ng4, trading the dark square bishop, or if Bf4, play e5, allowing for the knight on c6 to develop to e5 and finally allowing c5. If I had used John Waitzkin’s concept of recognizing ‘the space left behind’, I would have realized that g4 was no longer guarded after white’s h4 move.

12. Bc4 Na5 13. Be2 c5. I finally play c5, and now it is premature and out of order. I failed to address the h-pawn. I think this was my chance to play h4 to block the advance of white’s h-pawn.

14. h5 cxd4. Better would have been h6 followed by g5. I will remember this the next time I have this position.

15. Bxd4 Bxd4. I don’t know why I was compelled to make this trade, I guess I was anticipating the threat on h5, and thought this was the only chance to get an even trade out of the situation. I should have calculated longer at this point in the game. Truth is, I was not in tournament shape, and my thinking was very shallow. I really need to come better prepared for game one on my next tournament.

16. Qxd4 Nc6 17. Qd2 Nf6 18. hxg6 hxg6. I was already in trouble, but this was a capital mistake. According to Chessmaster X, I should have played Nce5 on move 16 and taken with the f-pawn after 18. hxg6. Again, my thought process was very shallow and not close to tournament level.

19. Nh7 Nxh7 20. Qh6 (1-0). Well played by John. I think he gave me plenty of chances early on to have an even game, but mentally I undermined my own game after he played Be3.  Next tournament I will definitely come better prepared for game one.