Amsterdam Open: R5 and R6
Express Report
The last day of the Amsterdam Open started in a dramatic fashion for me. In general, I was starting to fall into the tournament routine: ride five stops on a (surprisingly empty!) metro train, get to the playing venue, have breakfast in the University canteen and start playing. But then something unusual happened. Let’s take a look at the games. The full games can be found in this Lichess Study.
Round 5
I was Black and we quickly played the first couple of moves of Kalashnikov Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd 4. Nxd4 e5 5. Nb5 d6). Then he went for one of two mainlines and played 6. N1c3:
The threat is Nd5 and then Nbc7+, so a6 is vital here to stop that and to push the knight to the bad a3 square, one of the main features of Kalashnikov and Sveshnikov variations. I had this position hundreds of times in various games and inexplicably I blitzed 6…Be7?? (i.e. my next intended move after a6). Of course my opponent accepted the gift and played 7. Nd5. And I am basically lost in six moves.
So why did this happen? I guess the main reason is that I took advice to play the known opening moves quickly too seriously. I was not thinking and just moving through the motions of executing a line from memory, not doing even basic checks. But what I missed is that there might be memory glitches like this when you mix the order of moves and it’s immediately fatal. Another reason is probably my overall tournament standing which was poor. Being on a losing streak makes some people more reckless.
Another interesting bit is that exactly this Be7 disaster has already happened to me once in a blitz game. And because of that I even created an Anki flashcard with this position and reviewed it. Still it didn’t help. Likely because a random online blitz game is not as memorable as losing a classical OTB game in a tournament like this.
So now I think the lesson is that I should stop that nonsense of playing through opening moves very quickly (at least in classical chess) and do the basic checks to avoid such silly mistakes.
Anyway, I didn’t resign and played Kf8 to avoid the fork and see what happens next. My opponent played his moves quickly, I also responded quickly because basically there was not much to lose. Several onlookers were looking in surprise at our board, sometimes exchanging smiles with my opponent. I tried to wear my best poker face and look unaffected. In a couple of quick moves we reached this:
The queen took a pawn on d6 and gave a check with seemingly a double attack on b8 rook. Since we were playing quickly my opponent placed his hand in the area of the rook, intending to capture it! But then he saw that it was backwardly defended by the knight, and took his hand away, noticing the danger of playing quickly. Then he slowed down and eventually we reached this position:
I had some hopes on Qd2 mate, but of course my opponent was not going to allow this. I think here he had a spectacular Qxe6! move, temporarily sacrificing the Queen. If I take: fxe6 Nxe6 Ke2 Nxg5 wins the Queen, plus a bishop and a pawn. And if I play b5 going for the mate on d2: Ne3 (blocking the mate) Qxe3 (now Black Queen has something to work with for the desperado attack) fxe3 fxe3 Nxe6+ wins an exchange for White.
However, my opponent played a more normal move Nxe6+, won another pawn, we traded Queens soon, went to an endgame where I was two pawns down, and I eventually lost.
Round 6
In the last round I had Sicilian again (overall there were four Sicilians for me in this tournament). My opponent played 6…Bc5, which is called Cobra variation of Four Knights Sicilian, which I didn’t see much before:
I think the mainline here is 6…Bb4 (instead of Bc5) and then 7. a3 Bxc3 8. Nxc3 d5 9. exd5 and so on. I was out of the book here. I knew that Nd6+ looks tempting, but since it could also be played after Bb4 and is not the main move I considered that it has some flaws (I also vaguely remembered that the King just goes to e7 and feels fine in those lines — my opponent confirmed it in our post-mortem). So I just played a natural looking 7. Bf4 — it could potentially transpose to some line in Sveshnikov at this point after e5 Bg5. But he just castled, ignoring all those threats (?) on dark squares:
My opponent was responding quickly so I assumed this is all still theory. What do I play now? Nc7 walks into e5, so it doesn’t look good. I can play Bc7 or Bd6 as well, or maybe just Be2. I decided to play Bd6, exchange the bishops and plant my knight on d6. I realised that it can be challenged by Ne8, but I didn’t see anything better and Bc7 line looked unclear, my pieces could potentially be trapped.
After that we indeed exchanged the bishop, knights were traded too, the game simplified but I think I’ve got an advantage here:
I could have just captured that pawn and on Rd8 play c4 (and if b5, then b3). But for some reason I thought that this may be dangerous (overall I feel like I chicken out too much in this tournament), and also thought that I can put pressure on this IQP and win it anyway under more favourable conditions. So I played a3, c3, blockaded the pawn and was working against that weakness. But then we reached this position:
Where b5 is interesting, but he just exchanged the Queens, which is also a reasonable choice. I was also considering an interesting Bxd5 move here (if Black plays something other than b5 or Qxd4).
Here I felt that it’s my last chance to play c4 because the King can come and help defend the IQP. I thought that leaving black with a and c pawns while I have a and b pawns may be beneficial for me. But that led to nothing: c4 dxc4 trades-trades Bxb2 Bb5:
I think now I have to play a4, but then after Bxa4 Bxa6 Bb3 Kf1 Ke7 Black King is in time to defend c4 pawn, so it was a draw.
Summary
As I wrote in the first post of this series I really liked how the Amsterdam Open is organised, it’s definitely the best one I have played so far. I enjoyed the social part of the tournament too with all those educational post-mortems. During this tournament I also met many new chess players and exchanged contacts for further sparring games — I like growing my chess network of friends, it helps keep this a fun hobby!
Even though my chess results here were the worst (1/6 points! Which is “-4” and I never had anything worse than “-1” before), I take this as a learning opportunity. That Round 5 loss is definitely something to remember. Also, I was playing as a low seed against (strictly) 1800+ opposition, so this meant that there are no easy opponents even after losses.
Many thanks to Jan Timmerman who is the Chairman of this tournament. Jan teaches Commercial Economics at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and has a lasting passion for chess. We had a nice chat after the games when I had a chance to express my gratitude and appreciation of organisation efforts in person:
That concludes my series of express posts written during the tournament. It’s fun to share the games as they go, but of course it takes away potential rest time. Still, I think the benefits outweigh the downsides, so I will likely continue this tradition. Thanks for reading!