Tournament report: 4NCL Easter Congress
Peterborough, UK: 29 March - 1 April 2024
I hadn’t played in OTB tournaments for a while (my last one was in November 2023 and it was a rapid tournament), so it was time to look for something. Easter time is very appropriate, because of four days of bank holidays which is long enough to have a decent multi-day tournament without spending any precious days of annual leave.
“4NCL Easter Congress” looked like a perfect candidate with ~140 players in 3 categories, and it was held in Peterborough, UK which is relatively close to where I live. 4NCL is “Four Nations Chess League”, a British analog of a more famous Bundesliga — chess teams competition league, often featuring famous players playing for particular teams. And they also organise congresses for individual players like this one.
Technical details: 7 rounds, 90+30 time control. I signed up for the Major section (U2000) and was seeded almost exactly in the middle.
Additional plus was that all games from Open and U2000 sections were played on DGT boards and broadcast live on Lichess and ChessCom along with the clock time! First, it allows you to share the link with your friends who can watch the games, and second it records all the timings which is useful for monitoring time management in OTB games.
Round 1
In the first game I played Black against the second seed Peter Tart (1906 FIDE, 1951 ECF). It’s always exciting to play on the first board! I didn’t have very high hopes for the win, but was prepared to give a fight.
Here is a quick overview of the game as a GIF:
White accuracy: 89.5 (1 mistake, 0 blunders)
Black accuracy: 82.5 (2 mistakes, 1 blunder)
I’ve started playing Scandinavian on advice from my coach who noticed that I don’t attack the King often, so he suggested an opening which is easy to reach (and thus easy to practice - you just play 1…d5!), easy to learn (we spend only 2-3 hours on it: one session for the main line and another session for various deviations and gambits) and which can often lead to opposite side castling positions and potential for the attack.
By now I’ve played tons of Scandinavian games and can say that it’s indeed easy to play, often I just employ certain pieces set up that can be played against many move orders by White. This can be both an advantage (it saves time on the clock!) and disadvantage (may be somewhat boring as games tend to be similar). Also, if people really know what they are doing against Scandinavian — it might be tough to play, but I face challenging theoretical lines very rarely.
My results with it are quite similar to what I previously had with French (maybe slightly worse). I’ve got 55% score for Black with Scandi, and 56% with French (somewhat surprisingly I score better with Black than White against 1. e4!)
e4 d5 2. exd5
Now we are at the first major fork in the road in Scandinavian: Black can either recapture with the Queen (breaking one of the chess principles — do not develop the Queen early!) or develop a knight and sacrifice a pawn with 2…Nf6. Those will lead to different plans and ideas. I was taught to play 2… Qxd5, but I’m starting to also get intrigued by 2… Nf6, because it has several quite interesting gambit lines in it.
By the way, an interesting historical detail: the first chess game ever recorded was a Scandinavian! It was played in 1475 and is nicknamed "Scachs d’amor”. It is a poem (literally)! Here is a Wiki page about it.
2… Qxd5 3. Nf3
My opponent doesn’t play the most natural and commonly played move 3. Nc3 (75% Nc3 vs only 12% Nf3 on Lichess), immediately chasing the Queen and developing the knight with tempo. The downside of 3. Nc3 is that it blocks the c-pawn, so White can’t establish a big pawn centre with d4 and c4.
3… Nf6 4. d4 c6
What’s going on with this c6 move? Basically, the set up I am aiming for is similar to Caro-Kann: I want my pawns on e6 and c6 and I want my light squared bishop outside of the pawn chain. Other pieces can also be developed harmoniously. Here is the setup:
And then we castle queenside or kingside depending on the situation. Black position is quite solid. White normally only has a single pawnbreak: d5, but d5 square is heavily protected, so in order to achieve something with that, White must find a tactical solution. The bishop on f5 is important and is often called “Scandinavian bishop”. Black’s play often focuses on light squares that are controlled with Scandinavian bishop, e6 and c6 pawns and often the knights. Sometimes Black also play their pawnbreaks: c5 or e5.
5.Be2
A relatively rare move, quickly played, and now I start suspecting that my opponent also has some particular setup in mind.
5… Bf5 6. O-O e6 7. c4
Since White avoided playing early Nc3, they can now play c4 and establish d4/c4 pawn centre. Against this setup my coach suggested the following long-term plan: try to exchange all light pieces (knights and bishops) and attack d4 pawn with heavy pieces (rooks and queen). The thing is that after c4 has been played - d4 becomes weaker, since it can no longer be supported with a pawn. I successfully employed this plan in one of my OTB games in Basel, Switzerland where I had a nice win starting from a similar position.
7… Qd8 8. Nc3
Here I played 8… Be7, but potentially could have played Bd6, which provokes White to play c5, which is not that bad, since it makes d5 almost impossible and d4 pawn can eventually become a target. Another idea that the engine likes is to play 8…h6 to save the bishop (if attacked with Nh4). It also has a higher winrate on Lichess.
8… Be7 9. Re1 O-O 10. Nh4 (here we go, hunting the Scandinavian bishop) Bg6 (a normal square to exchange it, after hxg doubled pawns are not bad) 11. Nxg6 hxg6
12.Bf3!
And now my opponent plays a move which goes exactly against my plan (exchanging light pieces and playing against d4 on semi-open file). Bf3 prepares d5 push which would just exchange d4 pawn and open the game, so White will have no problems. This also explains why he played Be2 before. Also, White has the bishop pair that would become more powerful when the position opens up. I was somewhat puzzled as to what to play, spent 7+ minutes and played 12… Na6 which looks dubious. The idea was to either put the knight on c7 and prevent d5 break or when everything is exchanged on d5 I wanted to be able to evacuate my rook from a8 and also defend b7 pawn with Rb8. I missed, though, that Bf4 would just chase my rook away!
12… Na6?! 13. d5! (interestingly enough Stockfish thinks it’s a mistake, to me it looked like a very reasonable move).
Now behold: eight captures in a row, all on d5.
13… exd5 14. cxd5 cxd5 15. Nxd5 Nxd5 16. Qxd5
At this moment I realised that I can’t just protect the pawn with Rb8 as I had originally intended because of simple Bf4. Oh well. I tried to find some way out of this by not exchanging the Queens, but nothing seemed to work.
16… Qxd5 17. Bxd5
It looks like I am in trouble, White has many threats: Bxb7 would fork my rook and knight and e7 bishop is also hanging. I decided to play 17… Bb4 here, counterattacking the rook and moving the bishop to safety.
17… Bb4 18. Rd1?! Rad8! (pinning the bishop and exploiting the weak backrank) 19. Bg5:
Now I can just play Rd7 and defend b2 pawn. Even though the rook is not protected, Bxf7+ discovery doesn’t work because I can just capture with the attacked rook.
So at this point I managed not to lose any material and eventually exchanged dark square bishops.
19… Rd7 20. Rac1 Kh7 (to get f-pawn out of the pin and allow f6. Also stops annoying Bxf7 tactical option. But this move makes my king vulnerable to checks along h-file which becomes important soon)
21. a3 Be7 22. Bxe7 Rxe7 23. Bf3 Rfe8
Doubled rooks are nice, but my knight is worse than the bishop and it’s hard to bring it back into play from the rim. I could have played Nc5! if it was my turn, exploiting the back rank again, but of course my opponent saw that and played 24. b4 preventing that move.
24.b4 Nb8 25. Kf1! (solves backrank problem efficiently!) b6 26. Rc3 Nd7??
I tried to manoeuvre my knight back into the game and blundered with this last move:
I thought that I could rely on the pin again after Bc6 Rc8, but completely missed a simple Rh3+! reply unpinning the bishop with a check.
Then I lost a piece and resigned in a couple of moves after several forced exchanges.
I spent 5 minutes on 26… Nd7 and still had 37 minutes on the clock, so definitely had no time trouble. I think the fact that I missed this check can be explained by two factors:
it’s somewhat unusual that the king can be checked along h-file like this,
the bishop is currently blocking the path for the rook and I likely didn’t register that it changes once the bishop moves.
How could the game continue if I hadn’t blundered? White would have likely tried to penetrate with a rook to the 7th rank to pressurise my a7 and f7 pawns (with something like Rdc1, Rc7, Rb7, Rcc7). Potentially I can prevent this with the knight (say Na6). It’s easier to play for White and surely White has an advantage, so it’s still not clear if I could hold a draw.
I was not terribly disappointed by the loss, after all it was against the second seed and I managed to save that b7 pawn and the bishop before! 😊
Lessons learned
I should consider saving my f5-bishop with timely h6 in this kind of positions
I need to calculate forcing lines a little bit longer until they calm down (to be able to spot that rook on b8 could be chased away or to see that nasty h-file check): I have time for that in classical OTB games!
Reasons for loss
Missed counter tactic
Opponent playing well, actively countering my plan