A little afternoon Caro-Kann

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the tournament in AL last weekend, had some unforeseen events happen. However I was able to get some OTB games in at the local BAM group that plays on Sundays. It was a brutal assault that my opponent gave me. My opponent and I took turns with the English opening but I managed to get to good opening positions on several of the games but always seemed to make the wrong moves at the right time and my opponent did not hesitate to capitalize on them. All in all I was happy that I got out to play a bit but wished I would have played better.

One thing that did happen was I was looking through the Modern Chess Openings 15^th ed by Nick de Firmian and unfortunately spilled some coffee on it so I had to purchase it.

Horatio Caro

I played a game today on the FICS server against an equally rated opponent. I was looking forward to a game where I was not quite so overmatched in the rating department and figured I had a good chance at a win. I drew black and was ready to for either a Dutch or Caro-Kann. In this game I got the Caro-Kann.

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5

Good we are going it to the advanced variation. I had just been looking at some of my previously played games in this variation and had scored 2/4 so was fairly confident. In this position I have responded with wither Be6 and e6 (apparently I also tried Nd7 once to no avail either) as my main lines of defense and had won and lost once each with those moves. Today I thought I would try Be6 yet again and see how it played out. After the game I looked in my new chess book, ;) had to buy it I might as well get some use out of it and hopefully this will help me remember more, hoping that I would see Be6 as the proper response but unfortunately for my memory Firmian only suggest two moves for black on 4… Bf5 or c5 the next time I run into this game I will be much more prepared and choose one of these two moves (probably Bf5).

As always please let me know what you think and how you like or don't like my page.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
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5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

arbo - Caseylj

1-0, 2014.07.17.

[#] 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 I knew I was supposed to move the B but couldn’t remember to e6 of f5 turns out it was supposed to be f5. So instead I block by light squared bishop to stopping the advance of a pawn. 3...Be6? +0.98

[3...c5 +0.34]

4.Nf3 f6 5.exf6 Nxf6 Here I am thinking that I should have either taken with gxf6 or exf6 by taking with Nxf6 I have boxed in the dark squared bishop and will have to spend a temp to get him out. Which unfortunately in this game never happened and he ended the game on the squared he started having never seen the light of day. In the game I was thinking Nxf6 was better so that I could get the knight on e5 and have a good knight on a great square with support. 6.Qe2 Qd6 Protecting the bishop of e6 from the queen 7.Bd2 Ne4 I got the knight on e5 quickly and expected him to offer up a trade of the knights with Nc3. 8.Nc3 Bf5? +0.95

[8...Nxd2 9.Nxd2 Bf5 10.O-O-O Qf4 +0.35]

9.O-O-O Nxc3 He castled long side and then I traded the knights on f3, not sure what I was thinking here that he would go after the pawn protecting the knight and for some reason thought that it would be bad for me. The following is what I had thought he would do. Either way I now don’t see why I was nervous about it and thought that I had to trade.

[9...Nd7 10.Nxd5 (10.Nxe4 Bxe4 ) 10...cxd5 ]

10.Bxc3 Na6 11.h3 Nb4 Here, he has to trade his dark square bishop and if he doesn’t I can make is life miserable for a while, however I didn’t really have a solid plan in place if he did take the trade. I made a dumb attack while violating the most beginner of ideas; only expect your opponent to play the best move. 12.Bxb4 Qxb4 13.a3 Qd6 From here I really didn’t have much of an idea for an attack I needed to play e6 and clear the c or b file for my rook then maybe I would have a shot at a queenside attack. I tried to play aggressively but made some poor moves and never got a chance to activate my DS Bishop or my Kings Rook. 14.g4? +0.15

[14.Qe3 +0.72]

14...Bd7? +1.29

[14...Be4 15.Bg2 Qf4 16.Kb1 g5 +0.15]

15.Ne5 c5 16.dxc5 Qxc5 17.Nxd7 Kxd7 18.Bg2 this was the winning move in my mind at least in the white position I believe i lost the game on move 9... 18...Rc8? +8.62

[18...e6 19.Rhe1 +1.56]

19.Rxd5 Qxd5 20.Bxd5 Kd6 21.Bxb7 Rc7 22.Rd1 Kc5 23.Qe5 Kb6 24.Bf3 g6 25.Qxh8 Black resigns [1-0]

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