Looking back at that game, I see that four years ago I was targeting dynamics as one of my main weaknesses. Apparently something went right, since I now regard dynamics as one of my main strengths! As I alluded to in the previous post, understanding this part of chess regularly wins me games on its own, and this was as clear an example as any. Just don't look too hard at the first few moves...
It's possible to label this as a victory for opening erudition - the exchange sacrifice is known to theory, and I knew it was winning, so I just had to connect the dots and suddenly all of my pieces were on the right squares. But I'm sticking with the dynamics angle. Gower made a careful judgement on move 10 - he took 16 minutes on that move - and still made the wrong call, before castling into my attack on move 12 and opening the file in front of his king on move 15. The move I was happiest with is arguably the simplest of them all - 13... O-O - because it keeps up the pace rather than giving the white queen unnecessary attention.
I'll invoke Aagaard for the second time in three posts, since he believes that dynamics are the hardest skill to learn - you either get them or you don't, in his view. I don't agree, and would point to the games of Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tal and so on sitting on my bookshelf (I think calculation is much harder to learn, although as move 16 shows, I would wouldn't I?). However it's true that lots of people, even strong players like Gower, don't get them, and it's an advantage that has to be used. In short: you need to play to your strengths!
Since Stockfish hadn't punctured my mood yet, I was still feeling very good - 3/4 and a 210 performance doesn't happen every day. Whilst winning the tournament would be a very long shot, being best of the rest seemed perfectly realistic, and that was my goal for the last two games.
No comments:
Post a Comment