TeamLeague Round One part 2

Today was my first game of the TeamLeague T59, after much moving of the game time around we finally got to the game. The game was played in the middle of the afternoon my time so I was well rested and was working on the possible openings. I wanted to continue to work on the Ruy Lopez, for the last 2 years I have played the Caro-Kann almost exclusively on FICS so I figured my opponent would be prepared for that so I decided to play the black Ruy Lopez.  I had done some research on my opponent trying to gain some insight on where I could direct some games maybe gain a slight edge. My opponent has played well over 2K standard games on FICS so there was a lot of games in which to choose a plan.  As it turns out my opponent was not very good when playing the Pirc defense something like 20% as white. Unfortunately I was not able to learn the basics of the Pirc Defense in that short amount of time and didn’t want to fall for a trick. I thought that I would have been better prepared if I would have stuck with the Ruy Lopez and so I did.

The game starts out just like it should. 1 e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. 0-0 Nxe4 6. c3 I was expecting 6. Re1 or d4 and made a series of blunders that allowed white to exploit the pinned Knight and win a free Bishop. Later in the game trying to play a solid defense I went down by two pieces, and resigned on move 20. 

	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

Dreadtower - Caseylj

1-0, 2015.04.05.

[#] 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Nxe4 6.c3 d5 Here I was not sure what my response to c3 should have been but d5 was completely the wrong answer. 6… d5 causes several problems first and foremost it cements the pin on the c6 Knight and it hangs the pawn on e5. 7.d4 Stockfish has this move as not being a great move for white and I would have been better ignoring the pawn and pushing b4 to break the pin and gain some tempo Bd6 I, on the other hand, made two moves that allowed white to take a commanding lead in the game and never have to look back. 8.dxe5 b5 Terrible, no other words for it. 9.exd6 Qxd6 10.Bc2 Bf5 11.Nbd2 Qe6 12.Nb3 Rd8 13.Nbd4And now i will lose the bishop nothing i can do at this point. This position is just crushing. Nxd4 14.Nxd4 Qg6 15.Nxf5 Qxf5 16.f3 Qe5 17.fxe4 dxe4 18.Qg4 f5 19.Qxf5 Qxf5 20.Rxf5 Black resigns [1-0]

After the game my opponent was good enough to talk about the game, they were shocked that I went with the Ruy Lopez as they were preparing for a CK. It turns out my opponent is a lifelong fan of the Ruy Lopez and thought 6. c3 would be a way to through me off my prep and to get me out of theory. Turns out it worked like a champ. 

I still enjoyed the game and feel I have a much better understanding of the Ruy Lopez and where I made my mistakes. Learning can be painful at times. Trying to change up my openings and expand my chess knowledge I have lost 100 rating points on FICS and about 50 in my OTB ratings in the last few weeks. Hopefully this will be a good investment and I will gain those points back with some interest.