Amsterdam Open: R3

Express Report

OK, let’s face it, today was a tough day for me. I lost both games, not just because of a blunder or something silly, but by being steadily overplayed (at least it looks like this now). In the beginning everything was fine, but then somewhere in the middlegame (or in the early endgame in R4) I felt like I was losing the thread of the game. I guess it happens sometimes, you play stronger players and they play well, and you can’t do much about it.

Let’s look at the games. I had two Sicilians today, one as White and one as Black.

Round 3

I played Black against a 1900+ player from Spain. He played “Anti-Sveshnikov” variation, i.e. when instead of playing immediate d4 for normal Open Sicilian you develop both knights first: Nf3 and Nc3. I played e5 to create a bind on d4 square and stop that altogether:

After this he chose the variation with a slow long knight manoeuvre: Bc4, d3, and then before castling f3-knight goes on tour: Nd2-Nf1-Ne3 to be able to control d5 with both knights. Meanwhile I play Be7, d6, Nf6 and castle. Eventually we reached this position:

Black is somewhat cramped. Here I remembered the idea of activating the dark squared bishop via Nh5 and Bg5 that I learnt from GM Daniel King’s courses on Chessable. Not exactly sure if that is really applicable here, because the main idea is to exchange the bishop for White’s bishop. But still, I thought that the bishop would be better on g5 than on e7. I did my manoeuvre and he played g3, which I thought was fine for me. I thought that I can defend my bishop and he will weaken his King’s position with those pawn moves:

Here I have to go back with the knight (the threat is f4, attacking two pieces): Nf6. And then he can play either f4 or h4 and I thought that either would be OK. But it turned out that I misjudged this completely: this whole affair opened g-file for him which could be used for the attack and I didn’t have much counterplay. I could defend well, and the game was full of tension, but I can’t say that it was something I normally want to play when I go for Sicilian.

This is the situation after he went for f4 push and followed with Ng2:

I have to retreat the knight to some defensive/passive square like h7. And allow Qh5. After 5-7 more moves it turned to this:

I am fully on defence. The only counterplay I managed to get is to advance my Queenside pawns and dislodge the bishop from c4. But now it is on the other useful diagonal and all the pressure is on my King. He captured on f6, removing one of the defenders of the sensitive g7 square: Nxf6 Nxf6 Qg4.

Now if I naively take a pawn on a2, it’s just a checkmate after rook sacrifice on g7! Hence I tried to dislodge the Queen from the h-file by playing Ng6 (this steps into a pawn-fork f5, but I have a tempo on the Queen) Qf2 Bh3 (to avoid f4 fork and trying to trap a rook). But it’s all fine for White after Rg3:

If I had two moves in a row I could have trapped the rook with Nh5 and Nh4. But unfortunately chess doesn’t work this way. And if I play Nh4 — he can just play f5 and disconnect my bishop from the Queen’s support. And I play Nh5 — the most I can get is to trade my two knights for a rook and a pawn. Which looks like a fair trade, but after this White’s pieces are much better than mine. That’s what indeed happened in the game:

My bishop is somewhat stuck, rooks are lacking open files, while White has a knight ready to jump to d5, a great rook and bishops waiting to be opened towards my King. It ended surprisingly quickly: I played Rbe8 trying to lift the rook to the 6th rank, but after simple Qh4 I am in trouble. There is a threat of moving the knight and playing Bxh6 sacrifice (and I can’t take it because of Qxh6 mate). I tried to protect against that by moving the King up: Kh7, but that was not a good defence, he played d4, opening one more bishop and then it became completely lost:

There are all sorts of threats. I kept on playing for around 10 more moves, just because my opponent had only 1-2 minutes on the clock, but he was able to easily finish me off even with that little time. Really well played by White!

What’s the lesson here? I think I completely missed that the opening of g-file will serve so well for White’s attack. When I started all that business with Nh5 and Bg5 I only considered those Kingside pawn moves as weakening. Interestingly enough when I am playing similar positions with White (say in some French defence variations) I am completely aware that Kh1 and just one sheltering pawn can be fine for White if all the pieces are pushed forward and focused on the attack. But somehow it was surprising to me in this Sicilian.

I think I’ll stop here and won’t cover Round 4 in this post, just because it’s getting late and it’s already a lot to read. It was an interesting Taimanov Sicilian, and you can find full games in this Lichess study.

Tomorrow is the last day of the tournament with Round 5 and Round 6, I will see what it brings for me!