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.