After an intense tournament so far, I was ready for my last game. I did feel that the tournament was wearing me down a bit, but then again that was probably the same for my opponent. I was hoping for a quick gambit, but unfortunally that was not the case and i was in for a struggle.
I tried to play my delayed wing gambit again, but after 2. ...., g6 the game often turns more positional. Although the enige gives me a slight disadvantage before Qf4, I believe this still looks quite nice for white. Best might have been to play Bh6 and trade pieces, but I was aiming to pivot my queen to the king side in order to launch an attack.
In the above position I stuck to my plan and tried to open up the king side, by trading my bishop in order to open up the h file. It looks tricky, but then again, both of us don't have much room to maneuver. Also, black has the opportunity to just play Bg7 and avoid the trade. Fortunally, he did take and we started to get a bit more tactical.
Both of us did miss a lot of sharpness in our calculations and so far, I was not able to effectuate my king side attack and I was now starting to face a counterattack on the queen side. My bishop on b3 is going to be traded off, as otherwise I will lose the c2 pawn. Which means that Qb6 is quite dangerous. As compensation I could at least play f5 and push my pawn forward, to limit the room for the h8 rook.
Although I did have some compensation, I was fearing a bit that the queen coming in on b3 was the beginning of the end. The knight on g4 seemed to be there to stay as well and either the a or b pawn would be lost. I don't mind sacrificing my pawns., but losing them.... I needed to create some sort of threat, so decided to see if I could create some pressure on the b-file.
I managed to put my rook on b6, mess with the center pawns a bit to create free fields for my knights. Nonetheless, with h4, the rook on h8 was starting to come into play, the bishop got to have a look on the king side and the pressure was building up. Although I was 2 pawns down, I did want to trade queens. With the queens of the board.... how bad would the attack on the king side be? How was he going to defend d6, b7, etc. In the above position he should've gone for something like h3 and taking the g5 pawn. Luckily enough he played Qe3+ and the tables turned.
Although I'm still 2 pawns down and my king side is open, there's not too much damage he can do. For me, the pawns are now for the taking and actually black is already in a lot of trouble with a weak back rank. Here I should have played 36. Rxb7, Rxb7 37. Rxb7, Be8 (other fields are worse) and after that the pawns on the 6th rank are going down as well. I decided to go for Rxa6, which is still ok as well. The pawn on e6 can't be protected and a6 will then also be a threat.
So now only a pawn down, but way up in activity I was doubting a bit how to finish it off. Given the weak back rank a6 would have been an easy way to take advantage or even directly Rxb7. I went for Nd5, as either way my f-pawn would be protected, and I could still continue with something like a6.
He decided to sacrifice his knight to create a passed pawn in the hope to have some counter play. In my view the game was already over here. The passed pawn is not a real threat and in the worst case can be traded against my knight. My pawn on a5 and d5 are a significantly bigger problem for black. Here I continued with Rxb7, as the bank rank is still an issue and now a-pawn has a free path till the 8th rank.
Ok, granted this was a nice trick, which looks like it is going to be a draw, due to repetition. I can't take the rook on e4, due to d1Q+, however, I can take the rook on e2, as I will still checkmate him on the back rank.
Here he did still have 1 chance to keep playing, which is Kg8, as after 49. a7, Rxc3 50. a8Q+, Kh7. Nonetheless, I don't believe you can keep the king safe. The end position looked like this:
Granted, it looks almost similar like the previous position, but now my a-pawn is 1 step closer to the finish line.
Full game can be found here.
This concluded my tournament and as you can imagine I was really satisfied with the results. I got my first draws against masters, and also had some nice results against other 2000+ players. I didn't only play tactical games, but also played positionally.
Next will be my adventours closer to home in Eindhoven in the yearly WLC tournament.
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