Wednesday, February 13, 2008

R. Pearson-H. Soltani 02.07.08 1/2-1/2

I've been trying for a couple of days to post the game from last week that gave me the winning margin in the Reno Class B Ch. but the strangest things have been happening; Chess Publisher 2 had two boards embedded in the image, one of them stuck at after White's second move. No matter what I tried it wouldn't go away. The game played all right, but the whole thing was too disconcerting so I have got it below in the old CP, and I also tried it out in the ChessVideos.tv format as an experiment. (UPDATE: Shelved the old CP, too much clutter!)

We'll see what this looks like. Any comments and suggestions appreciated.

Notes: Briefly, (and this is from memory)...I think his unusual opening is actually not too bad. White gets an edge but is it really that big? His 6. ...c5 could be met by d5 with a completely different type of game, but allowing the capture on d4 turns it into a kind of Maroczy Bind Sicilian where White has more space but Black has the usual counterplay, albeit with the bishop on e7 instead of g7. My 12. Qc2 seems wrong (maybe Qd3) but isn't a blunder, however, he gradually takes over the initiative. I didn't see 18. ...Qe5 coming, Black definitely has the advantage now. However, he in turn didn't see my 22. Na4, exchanging queens gives White a better ending, so he tacks around with the queen, but I think he ought to avoid the repetition--I'm just not sure with what...

Not definitive annotations, eh? But I wanted to get this pup up and maybe I'll get back to it later when I get Fritz or something.

5 comments:

transformation said...

hard to follow, kind friend, but good you got this up. who is white, who is black, who won, might be obvious to you, but not user friendly yet.

its too late here, but i called in sick with bad flu in ascent and winding down after blitz all night...

always good to see you here!

warmest, dk

drunknknite said...

A few points.

First this is absolutely a Maroczy, the position of Black's dark squared bishop does not change the classification. There are many positions with the Bishop on e7 against the Maroczy, most of them are in the so-called 'Hedgehog' system, where Black places pawns on a6, b6, d6, and e6.

For instance the position on move 8 could have been arrived at by

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cd 4.Nd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.c4 (this move is popular after 5...a6, but for our purposes we're just going to throw it in now) Be7 7.Be2 0-0 8.0-0

I like transpositions and this is actually a reasonably logical move order (sometimes it's a real stretch).

As far as the repetition, Hadi was apparently blissfully ignorant as to the tournament standings, a draw equals a loss here, this game was must win. So how should Black proceed after 23.Kf1? My idea is 23...Nf4 but I can't really look at it in depth because I'm at work, here are some of the main points.

23...Nf4 24.Rd8 Rd8 25.Nc5 (on 25.Rc5 Rd2 is probably best but there is also 25...Ne2 26.Qe2 Ba6!! which is a prettier win [oooh, actually just as I was about to publish this I found 27.Rc4! but then when I wrote it here I found a refutation in 27...Bc4 28.bc Qc1+! winning the queen (because Rd2 or Rd1 follows).]) Rd2 Black wins

So the trade on the d-file is suicidal. But if there is no trade then next move Black can play the rook to e8 and increase the pressure on the bishop, it seems best to me to address this threat immediately (and maybe put more pressure on the c5 pawn with

24.Rc2 (24.Re1 loses to Rd2)

But actually as soon as I wrote the move 24.Rc2 I realized Black can just take the bishop on e2 with the knight because the queen cannot come to e2 and after 24...Ne2 25.Re2 Ba6 is winning again. So maybe something like 24.Bc4 is necessary, although in the case of the Bishop moving I was envisioning a knight sacrifice on g2 to expose the weakness of the f3 pawn so...

24.Bc4 Ng2 is my main line, I think Black is winning easily in these lines after my unintentionally lengthy analysis.

drunknknite said...

Um... I just realized that in that transposition I played 5.Nc3 and then 6.c4 which is impossible, so let's change it to 4...d6 5.c4 Nf6 Nc3, and the note still applies to White's 5th move, much more popular after 4...a6.

Robert Pearson said...

Thanks much for the comments, they're helpful. I'm now thinking that 7. d5 might be stronger, or at least yield a type of Benoni position I'm comfortable with. And at the end, yes, I had looked at Nf4 (after the game) instead of a queen move for him, it must be the way to go but I'll have to look deeper before conceding that it's winning. Usually I try and do better analysis before posting but it took so long to try and work out bugs that I was a little out of it.

One of those games where I played not so well, but the result was the one I wanted.

rockyrook said...

Robert,

It looks like we're on for week 2. I'm not sure who's playing white and black.

I'm available the 18th through the 21st. Generally speaking, I'm available to play those evenings (18:00 FICS time). I also might be able to sneek in some time during the morning/afternoon of the 18th and 20th.

Post a comment on my blog or send me an email (rockyrook at hotmail) to let me know.

Thanks!

Don (RockyRook)RockyRook