Showing the strain

In the second-to-last round, as in the second, I played someone I'd met during the week through old Bristol connections. This time I had the black pieces against 1877-rated George Miller - an experienced player with some good recent results, but someone I was reliably informed I should be aiming to beat.

This game differed sharply from the earlier Bristol Derby though in that my preparation was very speculative: Miller plays many openings, and confidently assured me the evening before that I would be thinking within my first two moves. I wasn't, but soon we were both left to our own devices. Perhaps channelling my anger at my poor play throughout the tournament, I went straight for the throat and was rewarded by a terrible oversight before the game had really got going - and yet the oversight was very nearly mine:

[Event "Major Open"] [Site "?"] [Date "2022.08.20"] [Round "8.27"] [White "Miller, George I"] [Black "Young, Daniel J"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "A38"] [WhiteElo "1877"] [BlackElo "2020"] [Annotator "Young,Daniel J"] [PlyCount "38"] [EventDate "2022.??.??"] {Another acquaintance I'd made in Torquay via Bristol connections - indeed a large group of us had been for a (disappointing) curry the night before this game, where my opponent made a big show of saying he could play any opening, and it was pointless to prepare. Indeed his repertoire is wide, but I detected a certain preference for fianchetto setups (even via 1. e4 - Closed Sicilians, KIA against the French...) so I wasn't entirely unarmed.} 1. Nf3 {(1:30)} c5 { (1:30)} 2. c4 g6 {Of the more common moves, 2... Nc6 always seems to get me into trouble after a quick e3 and d4, whilst 2... Nf6 stops me playing my preferred Fischer setup (...e6/...d6/...Nge7). The downside of the text is that it invites a Maroczy Bind, but I am not afraid of it against lower-rated opposition - Black's position has a lot of potential if he can break out, and preventing that demands accuracy from White.} 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Bg7 5. g3 $6 { White ends up with a poor hybrid of Symmetrical English and Maroczy Bind now, because he cannot maintain the knight on d4. The main move was of course 5. e4. } Nc6 6. Nc2 Nf6 $6 {Black has scored remarkably well by delaying this move, which eases White's pain on the long diagonal.} (6... d6 $142 7. Bg2 Be6 { White has to contort himself to defend c4, as b2-b3 is impossible with this move order.} 8. Ne3 Qd7 9. h4 {Preventing ...Bh3, but a bad omen when already behind in development.} Rc8 $15) 7. Bg2 O-O 8. O-O d6 9. Nc3 Be6 10. b3 $11 { (1:20) By contrast with the above, White has at least managed to secure himself. However I was intrigued by the possibility of gaining a tempo against the loose knight, which led to the following passage of play.} Qd7 {(1:11)} 11. Re1 Bh3 {At this point, played just to exchange pieces in a position where I have less space, but soon the game goes down a different path.} 12. Bf3 (12. Bh1 {Was what I anticipated, and has been picked almost invariably in practice - the text is a novelty.} Ng4 13. Bb2 Qf5 {My intention and also theory's choice - it looks crude, but the piece pressure on White's barren kingside is real enough! Still, White can defend with} 14. Bf3 (14. f3 $143 $2 {is often played, but walks into the shot} Qxc2 $3 15. Qxc2 Bd4+ 16. e3 Nxe3 {and White has to give up more material to escape the attack.} 17. Qf2 Nc2 18. g4 Nxa1 19. Re3 Nc2 20. Nd5 Nxe3 21. Nxe3 $17 {Black already has two rooks and a pawn for the queen, whilst White's pieces are in disarray.}) 14... Nge5 (14... Nce5 $6 { I planned, and past experience has generally favoured, the other knight move, but this risks abandoning the centre to White and he can highlight that fact with} 15. Nd5 Rae8 16. Nd4 Qh5 17. Qd2 $14 {when Black's kingside pieces are getting congested.}) 15. Be4 Qh5 16. f4 Ng4 17. Bf3 $11) 12... Ng4 {Here is that tempo against c3. My attack certainly looked promising to me, though I sensed that chess is too difficult a game for ...Qf5 and ...Nce5 to really lead to mate. It suited my mood though. (I can see a parallel with the game Camp-Young, Major Open 2019, when I was in a similarly deflated competitive position, launched a primitive attack with pieces alone and made it work.)} 13. Nd5 $6 {I'm reluctant to give this move a full question mark, although objectively that is what it deserves. White offers an exchange to take control of the centre and dispel my attack. In general I prefer to keep the bishop in this scenario (especially as White still has his own DSB) but I was tempted by the thought that he would have to put a knight all the way back to a1, and indeed that appears to tip the scales here.} Nge5 $6 {Even so, I opted to refuse the offer - there had been too many accidents in this event already. The text was played primarily to give my light-squared bishop an escape from Nf4.} (13... Bxa1 $142 {Of course the engine snaps it off, and at the board I was quite sure it would do so!} 14. Nxa1 Nge5 15. Bh1 f6 {Even with an unopposed dark-squared bishop, White cannot seriously dent this pawn constellation - having adopted a double fianchetto and let me blockade his h-pawn, White doesn't have a way to open lines around my king.} 16. Nc2 Rf7 $17 ) 14. Rb1 $2 {Cold feet? If I wasn't going to give up my king's bishop for a rook, imagine my reaction to getting his for just a knight!} Nxf3+ 15. exf3 { (52)} Ne5 $6 {(42)} (15... e6 $142 16. Nf4 Bf5 17. Bb2 Ne5 $15 {successfully activates the black pieces. I thought I could make do without ...e6, weakening my d-pawn and restricting my light-squared bishop. In other words, I wanted to have everything.}) 16. Bb2 Rfe8 $4 {The path White now takes backfires spectacularly, but that shouldn't disguise the fact that I didn't see it coming. The reader must be getting as exasperated as I am trying to count up all these tactical errors by now!} 17. Bxe5 $2 (17. g4 $142 $1 {not only threatens to win a piece with Nf4 (which I saw) but makes the combination in the game work by cutting off the bishop's defence of my queen (which I didn't). Hence my planned 17... h5 would have failed to 18. Bxe5 etc., and the piece sacrifices that made Miller reject this line also fall short.} Nxg4 (17... Bxg4 18. fxg4 Nxg4 19. Bxg7 Kxg7 20. Nce3 $18) 18. Bxg7 Kxg7 19. fxg4 Bxg4 20. f3 Bf5 $18 {There is no great danger to the white king.}) 17... Bxe5 {By now I had a suspicion of what was going on, but I still couldn't quite believe it when he happily blitzed out} 18. Rxe5 $2 dxe5 19. Nf6+ $4 exf6 {, before realising that my queen is defended. Well, a rotten game along with so many of the others, but by this point I wasn't going to complain.} 0-1

To his credit, Miller was able to laugh about it. Looking back months later it's easy to condemn blunders like this, but long events are tiring! A GM on one of the top boards had it even worse that day. All I can say is that people are more likely to err when you put them under pressure, so the caveman attempt at a kingside attack isn't entirely without merit. I think this is the explanation for 13. Nd5?!, objectively an incorrect exchange sacrifice, and 14. Rb1?, allowing his kingside to be damaged and offering up the bishop pair for no compensation. Anyway, White's kingside was undermanned and I was on holiday, so why not?

That said, my natural perfectionism combined with flickering tactical awareness really should have cost me the game. I considered 15... e6 but, like I said in the notes, I was being greedy and trying to make do without exposing the d-pawn to attack. The Nf6+ discovery theme didn't occur to me until White had already wrongly committed to it. Simply put, when you are on form you see these things; when you are off form you don't.

At last, just one round left to go, and one that was to prove a microcosm of the whole event.