Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Metro League R4

Ho,R (2019) - Prong,C (1786)
2005-2006 Metro Chess League
All the King's Men, Warren, 12.16.2005
Three Knights' Game [C46]

1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Nxe5 Nxe5 5.d4 Bxd4
This is a mistake. Bd6 is answered by dxe5 and Bxe5 follows. The difference is that black has not centralized white's queen for him.
6.Qxd4 Qf6
This gives away a tempo. d6 is the right move. White should answer with Nb5 and force black to choose to defend the fork on c7 or the knight on e5. Black cannot will not be able to play Kd8 because of Qc5 with a mate threat on f8 and a pawn capture threatened with check on c7.
7.Be3 c6
Fritz suggests that black's best move was to withdraw the knight to c6 and offer an exchange of queens. I must admit that I considered the move, but I wanted to prevent the c3 knight from taking advantage of the weakness on c7.
8.Be2 Ne7
The problem with this move, as I discovered after playing it, was that the knight really has nowhere to advance to. After Ng6 comes f4 and the e5 knight is lost, or so it appeared to me at the table. However, I failed to realize that the knight on g6 would help the queen double team the f4 pawn. Therefore, white would have to play g3 to prepare f4 giving black options.
9.0–0–0 0–0 10.h4 h6?
Black has survived a nearly disastrous opening and has yielded only positional concessions to this point. After 11. f4, black play N5g6 and is forced to part with a pawn after 12. Qxf6 gxf6 13. Bxh6
11.g4
This move is second best, but Randy is following his strategic plan of opening a file on the kingside.
11...d5
Black is trying dwsperately to get more pieces into the game and is willing to sacrifice the d-pawn to achieve this end.
12.g5
White realizes the d-pawn isn't going anywhere and therefore he takes time to open a path to the black king.
12...hxg5 13.hxg5 Qd6 14.exd5 Nf5 15.Qe4 Nxe3??


A blunder that only a novice should make!
16.Qh7# 0-1

2 comments:

Randy W. Ho said...

Hi Clint, nice blog. I am pretty sure that you played 7...c6 not 7...d6.

Clint Prong said...

You are 100% correct. I remember playing c6 on move 7, because of the cramping effect that the move had on my knights. I have made the correction to the move list, and rewritten the annotation that followed that move.