A Bittersweet Outing | Edmonton Fall Sectional 2021

This past weekend I partook in my first ever tournament with the standard time control used in FIDE events. It was also the first regular weekend tournament at the club in about two months, having only been made possible thanks to the extra efforts of our hard-working organizers while the rest of the chess scene in the province remains inactive.

The tournament was a six-player round-robin split in three sections; I was placed in the top section, pitted against three fellow club regulars, a university student living in a neighbouring province, and a local International Master. I went in with relatively low expectations—a modest 2.0/5—seeing as I wasn't in particularly great form and didn't quite have enough time to mentally prepare. While I had some proud moments and a decent result on paper, there were definitely some regrettable instances, as the title may suggest.

The Tale of the Forsaken Bishop

Round 1 may have very well been the highlight of the tournament, as well as one of my favourite OTB games to date. I had Black against someone whose only game in the public database was a loss as White in the London a couple of years ago against an FM, so I expected to see 1.d4 at the board—but he slightly surprised me by playing a mainline.

After promptly avoiding the Nimzo-Indian, my opponent played the Exchange Variation of the Tartakower QGD, a line I was highly accustomed to seeing online. However, he threw a spanner in the works with 9.Nxd5!?, a move I wasn't sure I'd seen before. I knew I could transpose to the mainline following ...exd5 10.Bxe7 Qxe7, but I decided to be more ambitious via ...Bxh4, with the idea 10.Nxc7 Bxf2. The position out of the opening was certainly an interesting one—on the one hand, White's king is slightly exposed and he'll likely need to expend a couple of tempi to castle by hand, but on the other, my queen loses some time and my minor pieces are still undeveloped. Objectively though, the dynamics should be quite balanced.

The first significant oddity was 17.Bxc6—a move which instantly changes the character of the game in my favour. He immediately resolves the standoff between the two light-squared bishops, resulting in my bishop being allowed to stand uncontested on the long diagonal. He then attempts to quickly double his rooks on the c-file, but I beat him to the punch with 18...Bd5! hitting the loose a2-pawn. Now, note this position after 20...Bxa2 because my bishop will remain stuck in the corner for virtually the remainder of the game, liberated at last only on the 54th move!

Following a series of unsuccessful attempts to trap and win my bishop, as well as the nice find 34...f5! with my clock rapidly ticking down and six more moves to play to reach time control, we transition to an endgame where my stranded bishop is still under constant watch, but I have three pawns to show for it (yes, I blundered my rook with two minutes left on the clock—it happens), and this is where my fun begins. The king improvements were straightforward enough, but on move 43, I devised the only winning plan—I was going to rush my e-pawn all the way up to e2 while the White king hurriedly retreats to c1, the only way to free his rook. This was important because the pawn controls the d2 and f2 squares, which the rook could potentially use as access points to generate counterplay elsewhere. As is, he got into a state of zugzwang where he was forced to move his g-pawn to free the h2 and g2-squares, but that simply carves the path to glory via Ke4-f3, and that was all she wrote. This 5-hour-long grind marked the most lengthy chess game I've ever played.

The Benoni Brigade

I was fresh awake the next morning to commence Day 2, eager to play White in the next two rounds. The first of which went off to a flying start, my opponent playing an aggressive line in the Modern Benoni with a quick ...Ne8 and ...f5.

I decided to commit the structure right away with 14.f4. Simply put, my idea was the following: if it doesn't get me mated, it must be a fantastic positional move—it freezes Black's f-pawn in place, as he had ideas of f5-f4 to secure the e5-outpost for his knights. Just a few moves later, my opponent starts the fireworks. With 15...Ndf6 on the board trapping his own bishop on d4, I knew he was committed to this ...Ng4+ idea, but I had calculated I was fine after 17.Kg3 ....or so I thought! Turns out we both missed the critical continuation 17.hxg4 fxg4 18.Nxd4 Qh4+ 19.Kg1 cxd4 20.Ne4 Bf5 21.Qxd4! Bxe4 (to play g4-g3 without allowing Nxg3) 22.Qxe4 g3 23.Qe6+ Kh8 24.Qh3, and Black's attack is gone. During the game I had only seen up until ...Bf5 and wasn't quite able to spot the right defence.

As played in the game, however, Black quickly ran out of steam. I played the counterattacking 21.Bd3! to remove the pesky knight, and we traded down to a winning position with two minor pieces for a rook. From there, it was merely a matter of technique, and I delivered.

Opening Failure

Round 3 perfectly demonstrates how preparing too hard for a single opponent can easily backfire. In this case, he knew I would likely crush him in his pet lines, so he went with something completely unexpected—but to his chagrin, I was still prepared for it! In fact, I distinctly recall having studied the line in brief in my White repertoire on Chessable.

His Polish defence-turned-gambit wasn't exactly difficult to neutralize. He told me after the game that he thought he was supposed to be happy when the knight got the d5-square, which led me to believe he prepared a setup other than the optimal one with 3.Nd2 and 5.a4. Anyway, there wasn't much special to point out in the middlegame. I suppose I did like the move 17.Qd4, though—who knew a mere queen centralization could be so aesthetic?

Shortly after forcing a queen trade on my terms with 21.Ra5, I did technically make a small mistake. Much better was 24.Bc4! to keep my strong knight on d4, as Black could have played something like 25...g5! to artificially isolate the e5-pawn, thus making it a much harder task to break through. My opponent made it easy, though, and gave me a rook trade. I delivered the final nail in the coffin with 28.Bb5! and I completed the third round with a perfect 3/3. I had a long road ahead of me, though, with the black pieces against the two strongest players for the final day.

Tenacious Resistance

Round 4 was a highly anticipated battle with a near-2500 IM, the highest rated player I've ever faced by nearly four hundred points. Obviously I was fully prepared to lose, but my goal was to put up as much resistance as possible and create complications for even the slightest ray of hope.

Thanks to public and online databases, I was prepared to play the QGD with Black once more. He opted for the Bf4 line, the so-called Harrwitz attack, and I was relatively comfortable playing my 6...Nbd7 7...Nh5 system. Everything up to move 17 was prep and I was fairly confident my position was stable for a while. The first possible turning point in the game was my decision after a lengthy half-hour think to release the tension with 20...bxc5, with the sole idea to go 21.bxc5 Rxb1 22.Rxb1 Nxc5!? after which I would be up three pawns for the sacrificed piece with good chances to make things super messy. My opponent saw this, of course, and believed me. As such, 22.Qxb1 was played, yielding control over the b-file.

At this point in the game, I definitely had a fine position. All I really had to do was stay put and not do anything radical, and it would have been rather tricky for White to come up with anything substantial. I played some natural improving moves, and as the time pressure crept up, my mindset shifted completely. I thought that if I sat around doing nothing, my opponent would inevitably crack my defences at some point—likely on the kingside with h4-h5 ideas—while I still had no active plan. Therefore, with about 9 minutes on my clock and the IM having about 20, I committed with 29...f6, which turned out to be a fatal mistake. I clearly was gearing for e6-e5, but the problem is White can always prevent it, or at least make the break unfavourable after the ensuing complications, with the simple Re1. Ultimately, I was never able to execute the e5-break, and I got cleanly outplayed in what was effectively a Rapid game at that point.

An interesting thing to note was that during our post-mortem analysis, with the help of an engine we discovered that my best opportunity in the game was 29...Nf6!? which my opponent had initially dismissed due to 30.N1d2. But as it turns out, following ...Ne4 31.Nxe4? dxe4 32.Ne5 e3! Black will penetrate on the 2nd rank with a much better position.

The Final Test

Quite frankly, I was exhausted heading into Round 5. The prior round started at 9 am the same day and I had just finished a hard-fought, mentally taxing game against an exceptionally strong player. Combined with the fact that I had calculated a win meant I'd have my first of three NM norms—a 2300+ performance rating in a standard 5+ round tournament—I didn't exactly have my hopes up for this game.

The opening this time around was totally unexpected. My opponent was a tricky NM who usually goes 1.e4, but he has a tendency to play the most random stuff, even in serious classical games, whenever he feels like it. And this is exactly what he did, knowing that, in his own words, "there probably isn't a single 1.e4 opening [he] knows better than [I] do". Now, the Rubinstein system, the opening he opted for, isn't very familiar to him, either. The point is he wanted to play something offbeat where he'd be less likely to get into a much worse position early on, which is exactly what happened in our previous (and only other) encounter.

There was a small issue with the move order he played, though. Generally, b3 in the Colle is only played after Black commits to e7-e6, and this is because Black won't be able to develop his light-squared bishop to its most active squares, f5 or g4. By playing b3 before ...e6, Black can exploit this order with 4...cxd4! 5.exd4 Bf5 where he's in time to develop the problem piece outside of the pawn chain without losing any time; moreover, the fixed structure in the center makes it less appealing for White to develop with Bb2, and if he develops the bishop elsewhere like in the game, the move b2-b3 would turn out to be a complete waste of a move.

I knew all of this of course, and following a few strange moves from my opponent, we got into a Fianchetto Panov structure with the Black bishops on g7 and e6. In hindsight, this was probably a poor strategy seeing as I don't have much experience in that structure! After missing my one opportunity to play the thematic 10...Ne4—a move which simultaneously frees my sleeping bishop on g7 and discourages Nb1-d2 on account of ...Nc3—I allowed White to equalize comfortably by giving him the structure he wanted with the knight on c3 exerting pressure on my center. Even though my position was still okay, I couldn't make sense of Black's ideas in that type of position. I was cramped and some of my minor pieces felt redundant. Unsurprisingly, I slowly started to drift until my position was completely irreparable. That day just wasn't it for norm hunting, it seems.

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All in all, the tournament was enjoyable. Sure, I had two stinkers on the final day, but I'm not going to beat myself up for it too much. It's more productive to use this as a learning experience for other high-pressure tournament situations I may find myself in. My next weekend OTB event will be an out-of-town tournament in just under three weeks where I'll have the chance to face off against the best players in the country. Until next time!
-pd159