Lichess lonewolf S40 round 2: How the tables can turn!

Introduction

Hi everyone!
This is the second blog in my series, where I will be covering my games in the 40th Season of Lonewolf.
If you haven't already, I recommend you read my first blog before reading this one, and at the end of this blog, there will be an announcement, along with how I plan to continue with this series, so stay tuned for that!
All my annotated Lonewolf games can be found here.

With that out of the way, lets jump right in!

Round 2: JEEprep2374 ( 2084 ) vs Lawkeito ( 1954 )

Since I lost my first game, I played round 2 against a lower rated opponent ( make no mistake, this dose NOT mean the game will be easy! ).
I looked at some of my opponents games and saw that they play the Sicilian defense. So I revised some of the lines which I thought might appear in the game, I started the game.

The game started: 1.e4 c5 2.b3!? g6
Already, this was a surprise to me. My opponent had never played this against the b3 Sicilian, so I had not looked at it as deeply, but it was the main line to challenge white's setup. There is a lot of theory which I will not go into deeply, but I will cover some of the main ideas white has in this opening.
The game continued: 3.Bb2 Nf6 4.Qf3!? d6 5.Bb5+ Nc6 6.Bxf6 exf6

I opted for a uncommon sideline with Qf3, with the basic idea to create weaknesses in black's position and then pressure them with my queen and minor pieces. The game continued with a few developing moves, and I took the knight on f6.

Although it seems a bit odd to trade off my strong bishop for black's relatively bad knight, this move has a very clear idea, to destabilize black's pawns.
The critical line after this is to play Qg3 to target black's weak d6 pawn and make it difficult for black to develop, but since I did not remember the critical line clearly, I played 7.Nc3?!.

This allowed black to play 7...Bg7, which would not have been possible if I had played Qg3 due to Qxd6. This already gives black a small edge, but the position is still playable.

The game continued: 8.Nge2 0-0 9.Bxd7 Bxd7 10.Rd1?!

I spent a bit of time navigating the position, thinking down to 18 minutes, mostly thinking about 9.Bxd7.

I opted for Bxd7, because even though I am going into a 2 knights vs 2 bishops position, the alternative was to allow the knight to e5, where it would be quite strong and my light squared bishop suddenly becomes pretty much useless and actually quite close to getting trapped.

I played Rd1 with the idea of playing d4 to try to create counterplay, but black very quickly can punish me for leaving my king in the center with 10...f5!
suddenly, black's bishop is open, the e file is opening, and the light squared bishop is going to land on f5.

The correct move was 0-0, simply getting my king out of the center first, and then I would proceed with whatever plan I had.

I responded with 11.exf5, because I did not want black to take on e4 and then play Bf5 with tempo. Black played 11...Bxf5, attacking the c2 pawn and I very quickly responded with 12.d3??

Although this move blocks the light squared bishop and looks ok at first glance, it severely weakens the dark squares, and allows black to play 12...Qa5!

Suddenly, I have very few choices to defend my knight, which is now pinned by the queen and attacked by the bishop on g7. I am forced to play the ugly 13.Kd2 in order to not lose a piece, but now my king is permanently stuck on d2 where black can very easily build an attack.

The game continued: 13...Rfe8 14.Qxb7?

In this position, black has a forced checkmate. I suggest you try and find it before continuing.

Given some thought to the puzzle? If you found 14...Qxc3+!!, then congrats!
the idea is very simple. If I take Nxc3, then there is Bh6+!, and after f4, Bxf4 is checkmate. otherwise, simply Rxe2 and c2 cannot be defended.

my opponent missed this and played 14...Rab8. I played 15.Qc6, giving yet another opportunity for my opponent to play Qxc3, but my opponent misses it again and plays 15...Rxe2+, giving up the rook for both my knights and a crushing attack.
The game continued: 16.Kxe2 Qxc3 17.Qxd6 Qxc2 18.Kf3 Re8 19.Rhe1 Rxe1 20.Rxe1

I played Rhe1 to try and trade off some of black's pieces and hence slow down the attack, but even after trading rooks, all black has to do is avoid back rank issues and the game will play itself from there, a bishop pair simply overpowers a lone rook, not to mention the multitude of weaknesses.
But black played 20...Bd4??, which simply blunder 21.Re8+! followed by a Qf8-Qe7 perpetual.

This was quite the roller coaster, and I am quite lucky to have escaped with a draw. Still, I drew against a lower rated player, and there was definitely significant room for improvement in this game, mainly sloppy opening preparation and disregarding the danger of massive holes I created in the position.
Overall, I could have played better, but it could also have gone much worse for me, so I was quite relived after this game.

Current score: 0.5/2

The future of this series

Although I had initially planned on covering the games of my team for the 4545 league as well, it turned out to be quite overambitious of a goal, it is quite a lot of work to analyze 8 games in depth,in a week, and I couldn't bring myself to brush over the games, so I decided to drop that idea. I will continue writing recaps of my lonewolf games, and hopefully I will also expand to cover events such as the upcoming WCC later this year.

Round 3 of Lonewolf has already ended, but unfortunately I was unable to find a time to play with my opponent in round 3, so agreed to mark is as a draw. This puts me at 1/3.

The announcement!

I will be playing a classical OTB tournament for the first time in over a year! Unfortunately due to this tournament I will not be playing round 4 of Lonewolf either, but in exchange I will be covering the 9 games of the tournament afterwards in a separate series! so stay on the lookout for that!

In the meantime, play chess, and enjoy life!
I will see you again when I cover my first round game in my OTB tournament!

That's all!

Thank you for reading this blog!

please leave any feedback you have in the comments!