Teamleague Round 2

TeamLeague (T59) round two is in the books, while my team won the match 3-1, my match was unfortunately the lone loss L.  I thought I played a pretty decent game however I made two a blunders one on move 8 and one in the end game which cost me a pawn each. 

The game moved into a Slav position in the opening and my opponent made a quick Bg5, having run up against this in the past and I wanted to keep a knight on f5 and to prevent the white queen from coming to a5 and his light squared bishop to c4, this turns out really bad for black.  I pushed h6 then h5, I believe this to be my first blunder and it eventually cost me the e6 pawn.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

mysticeye 1623 - Caseylj 1321

1-0 (FICS rated standard game) 2015.04.12

[#] 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 I debated here for a long time, was wondering if 4... a6 5. cxd cxd 6. Bxf6 exf6 was better or if I should have went directly with 4...e6. but after looking at it with the computer I think I made the correct choice. 4...dxc4 I wanted to make sure that I would be able to keep a knight on f6 to keep an eye out for the queen on a5, but I needed to have moved Be6 first. 5.a4 Nbd7

[5...Be6 6.e4 Qb6 7.b3 cxb3 8.a5 Qc7 I like the pawn on b3 should cause plenty of problems for white. ]

6.e4 h6 7.Bf4 Trying to get the pin on the c3 Knight, should be annoying for white. 7...e6 8.Bxc4 h5?! or ?? not too sure but this move allows the Knight to return to g5 and to take tha pawn on e6 in a few moves. 9.Nf3 Bb4 10.e5 Ne4 11.Qc2 f5 12.O-O Nb6 13.Nxe4 fxe4 My opponent thought that Qxd4 would have been best here but I am not too sure, I felt his knight on e4 would have been very strong after f3 14.Ng5 Nxc4

[14...Qxd4 15.Be2 Nd5 16.Rfd1 Qc5 17.Qxe4This may have led to a better position but I couldn’t figure out a good continuation or tell if I was any better or not than by going the way I did. ]

15.Qxc4 O-O 16.Nxe6 Bxe6 17.Qxe6 Kh7 18.Be3 Qc8 19.Qc4 a5 20.Qe2 Qf5 21.f3 exf3 22.Rxf3 Qg6

[22...Qg4 23.Raf1 Rxf3 24.Rxf3 Rf8 25.h3 Qg6 26.Rxf8 Bxf8 ]

23.Raf1 Rad8 24.Rxf8 Rxf8 25.Rxf8 Bxf8 26.Bd2 b6 27.Qc4 Qb1 I thought a trade was fine and I stood a chance in the endgame. 28.Qc1 Qxc1 29.Bxc1 Kg6 30.Kf2 Kf5 31.Ke3 c5 32.dxc5 and this cost me the game Bxc5+ is much better. 32...bxc5

[32...Bxc5 33.Kd3 Kxe5 34.Kc4 Kd6 35.Kb5 Kd7 White may be slightly better but this looks very drawish to me. ]

33.Bd2 c4 34.Bxa5 Bc5 35.Ke2 Kxe5 36.Bc3 Kd5 37.Bxg7 Bb4 38.Kf3 Ke6 39.g4 h4 40.Bc3 Bc5 41.h3 Bb6 42.Ke4 Kd6 43.a5 Bd8 44.Kd4 Kc6 45.Kxc4 Be7 46.b4 [1-0]

Generated by Aquarium

I really enjoyed this game and my opponent was really gracious to go over some of the points in the game with me afterward. Although I lost I can see some improvement in my strategy and tactics as well as a slight (not enough) improvement in the endgame.