Analysing one of my OTB games.

For most people winter times are peaceful and quiet. I plan on doing the polar opposite. I opt to play some tournaments and I will violently crush or be violently crushed by any opponent that happens to stand in my way. With these plans in mind, I figured I could try to do some serious training to increase the likelihood of the former and reduce the likelihood of the rather unfortunate latter scenario. These thoughts aren’t anything new, obviously. It happens every year. But here’s the exciting part: this time I will do training before the tournaments. It’s brilliant, I know!

I don’t really know what to do, though... Empirically I would say that doing some tactics greatly helps my tournament play, not because it makes me better at chess, but because it just makes me faster at thinking. So yeah, technically it helps, but not structurally. So, what else is there to do? I recently started enjoying playing winning positions against Stockfish 8, perhaps I’ll post something about this trainings method too, one day. Today, I’ll do some more traditional stuff. I dug up some games from previous years, and I’ll just go through one of them. See what I can learn.

Some general remarks about the game

Using the wonders of this interface, I will import the game right here. I played the black pieces. Time control was 'something classical', I cannot remember exactly. In the rest of this post, I will check my 12th and 20th move more closely.

Alright, I’m not particularly proud of this one. After a calm opening phase where my opponent wasn’t really too bothered to exploit the first-move-advantage, I managed to misjudge some positional setup. After whites clever 15. d4 push, my c-pawn became an eternal weakness. From there, I could only wait, whilst white could push. In a rather unexciting turn of events, we decided on a draw later. I couldn’t complain. The final position still has plenty of complications in it, but it’s only white who’s in charge, whatever happens. Even with infinite time, it’s hard to formulate a constructive plan for black.

In retrospect, the question becomes why I never ever pushed that damn c-pawn forwards. I took a quick look with Stockfish, and it becomes pretty hilarious how ...c5! is playable at basically every possible instance in the game. In my defense, I was planning on doing that, honestly. I just, wanted to be clever, you know. Playing some other moves first. Developing some pieces. Pretending to do something. But then, suddenly, 14. cxd5 happened, and a move later the structure was different. Perhaps I should have been more principled, and less ‘clever’. Just play the pawn, it has to be played eventually.

After 15. d4, the move ...c5 is still available, but it’s more tricky. White can take it (let’s say after 15. ...c5), leaving black with an isolated d-pawn and getting a nice outpost on d4 for the knight. I have a lot of trouble assessing these type of positions. Material is equal, both sides have active pieces. Just the idea of having an isolated pawn scares me so much that I just stop thinking about these variations, and play some alternative. If that sounds incredibly unprofessional to you, well, I’m afraid you’re right. I should be more objective here. Explore worlds I would usually avoid.

To be fair, I did consider ...c5 carefully at move 20, but I didn’t like it. So I played the really passive but brave 20. ...c6. I knew I would be without counter-play for the rest of the game, but I didn’t see any way for white to break through. I remember having this very luminous thought during the game: “well, I don’t see any forward plan for white right now, but obviously this position will totally crumble when white just shuffles around a bit”. Positivity at its finest. Surprisingly though, white really doesn’t have a winning plan in the final position, so for once, my sarcastic depressive thoughts were wrong. My objective assessment was right.

Some deeper analysis, why 12. ...Bd6 is kinda meh

There are two situations I want to check more closely. The first one being 12. ...Bd6?!. It’s a half year later now, and I have a lot of trouble remembering why I played this move. It’s unclear why the following sequence 13. Bg5 Qe7 would favor black. Looking more closely, I remember something about the b-pawn being fixed on a dark square. In my positional mastermind, the bishop would become rather dumb if the pawns would be fixed on the dark squares c5, b4 and a5. So I wanted to trade it. Who could ever argue with such an innocent and principled plan?

It’s just not really the ‘move to be played’ in such positions though. The bishop is fine on e7, the trade is not that exciting, and white just avoids the trade, if needed. After staring at this game for quite a while, I noticed something here. The game surely will proceed on the queenside and/or center. The kingside is just stable, nobody would start a cavemen attack there anytime soon. Black already has a nice head-start on the queenside with the advanced b4-pawn. So, we should put our focus there. ...Bd6 does not contribute to this.

First of all, the healthy 12. ...a5 would be perfectly fine. Strengthening the queenside, getting ready for more pawn pushes. White could still go for the positional plan as in the game (see analysis), but black pieces are slightly better positioned here.

The obvious choice is to bring the backward pawn on c7 into play with 12. ...c5. According to historic-me, this would make my dark-squared bishop dumb. Possibly in a far-away future, but the advantages are way more important. White has some options to deal with the situation, but none of them are very satisfying. Taking on d5 and going d4 doesn’t work, see analysis. Waiting moves like Qc2 allow black to establish a strong pawn structure with ...a5. The moves e4 and d4 drop material. Taking on d5 and playing that structure wouldn’t help either, as black can continue pushing on the queenside.

In this analysis, I wondered about the structure where a-, b-, c- and d-pawns are fixed. I included a variation. None of this is forced, especially whites b3 is a pointless waste of time, and blacks d4 isn’t required at all. But still... Black has a slightly easier time pushing the pawns on the kingside in the resulting position, I think. For sure, it’s not something to be afraid of as black. The bishop on e7 is not the greatest thing alive, but it isn’t locked in, as I feared.

Some more deep analysis, doing the non-passive approach

Another such situation could have arisen would I have played 20. ...c5. I was afraid that the white positional advantage after 21. dxc5 Bxc5 would be decisive. White has a good square on d4 for the knight, the weak d5-pawn is attacked by the white bishop, whilst the black bishop is just passively defending it. Even after taking the enemy knight on d4 with the bishop, the resulting endgame just looks good for white. Even the sole description of these terrifying prospects gives shivers down the spine.

In practice however, things ain’t so bad. Sure, allowing the white horsey to survive on d4 is a good way of getting into trouble, but the bishop should always be able to keep an eye out. White doesn’t really have that many other promising ideas. There are many options to trade stuff, but the resulting endgames are holdable for black, despite the pathetic bishop on b7. In the analysis, I show some lines. The advanced b-pawn is somewhat useful to provide some counter-play. If b3 falls, the pawn can run. Also, if white gets careless, the pawn creates an infiltration point for Rc3.

So, to summarize, 20. ...c5 is a more secure way to an unpleasant draw. After 20. ...c6 black can only wait. After 20. ...c5, a bunch of pieces get traded and the road to the draw is shorter. The possible endgames require some precision, but surely they aren’t that complex, right?!...

In conclusion

I find it pretty interesting to realize how much weight I put on relatively minor issues. Twice in this game, I refrained from making a sensible move, just because of one unhappy piece. Ironically, first the dark-squared bishop looking at a dark-squared pawn, and then the light-squared bishop looking at a light-squared pawn. These stupid pieces should just stop complaining about the working conditions and be happy they are still alive in the first place.

But seriously, why do I look at 20. ...c5, see a knight landing on d4, and refuse to check further? Some voice inside me tells me there’s no need to look further. As if these type of positions are always automatically losing. Now that I did some objective analysis, it’s not that impressive anymore. It looks pretty straightforward to calculate. I guess it’s some unconscious decision making going on here, and bishops blocked by pawns are my greatest nightmare.

Well, that’s enough food for thought for now. Next time, I shall bury all my bishops behind pawns and nobody shall stop me.