FORTH GO

My opponent for the fourth round had beat me twice in last year’s G15 tournament, but the games were close enough that I had hope of getting 1 out of 2 points and making a respectable showing in the A bracket.

I was White in the first game opening up with a Queen’s Gambit Declined with some early pawn action on the queenside to reach the first shown position. It looked like I could take the pawn at a5 with my rook, but I soon realized he was setting a trap for me.

If I took the pawn, he would take my bishop reveaing an attack on the rook. I calmly castled instead, and he traded bishops anyway.

I then started to put pressure on the a pawn. He decided to let me have it instead of getting all bottled up trying to defend it. Black can add a second defender to the pawn with Qd8, but I’m not sure he can add a third before I can add my queen as a third attacker. The pawn didn’t seem that valuable anyway since my extra pawn was doubled.

After taking the pawn, we had a rook stand-off, and I took the opportunity to trade them all away since I often run into time trouble. After symmetrical knight invasions and threats, we reached the next position. Black could have traded knights while winning a pawn and leaving both sides with fractured pawn formations, but he had his sights on my king, thinking he might get a killer knight fork on f2.

However, the attack did not pan out, and after getting my knight back on the kingside to counter any further threats, I offered to trade queens before seeing a better use for my queen. Black refused to trade, and I had to offer again to get my queen back into position for the attack (this time I didn’t want him to take the trade). After he declined the trade again, we arrived at the next shown position. Now it was time for the attack.

With his forces away, I was able to invade his king’s position starting with Qg6+. Taking two pawns gave me a strong position in the final diagram, but how to finish? With less than two minutes remaining on my clock, I was fortunate to see a combination to trade queens and win a pawn and knight to boot. After Qxc7+ Kxd7, Nxd5+ produced the fork to win back his queen. From there it was simple to promote pawns and win.

I lost both of my round 3 games against another top player. In the first game, as White, I made the mistake of going after a pawn while leaving myself open for an invasion by Black’s queen. In the first diagrammed position I have the e4 pawn attacked twice while it’s defended once, but making the capture leaves my king exposed for an attack. I should have made a developing move instead, such as getting my bishop out to allow castling. (“First to castle, never hassled” was what the great Polinski used to chant.)

The second position shows the quick penalty for my mistake. Not only is he going to get the pawn back, but I will lose more material, too. Luckily, Black didn’t find the very best moves, and I was able to parry the attack being down only a knight for a pawn. But further mistakes by me allowed him to quickly convert the advantage into a win.


I played Black in the second game, and my position looked pretty crummy coming out of the opening with two sets of doubled pawns, but I did have some hope for improvement. The extra f pawn could be used for attacking, I might coerce an exchange at c6 to undouble that pawn, and the rook might be able to attack on the half-open h file. The first two of those ideas came to pass, and I ended up with a favorable position after a few exchanges, as seen in the second diagram of this game, plus I had the “advantage” of two bishops vs. two knights.

Unfortunately, this is where I blundered, not noticing that the e7 pawn was attacked twice. Once he broke up the pawn chain, I couldn’t keep the remaining pawns all defended and soon lost.