This Monday our team competition started. I was 6 weeks without competetive chess, so I was looking forward to play again. If you take into consideration that I really enjoyed live streams from the Corus tournament then you can’t imagine how ‘horny’ I was to play chess ;)

Our opponent in the 1st round was a bit weaker team and we were supposed to win the match. The team competitions here are played in teams of eight. This time we were in six people from the basic line-up plus two players from the substitutes group.

The match started well for us as the opponent was only in seven players. As the waiting period here is one hour, we have to wait 60 minutes to score our first point. Then we won on the 6th board and there was a draw on the 8 th board (which I did not understand as our player was a pawn up and his opponent had no compensation).

The score was 2,5:0,5 and situations on other boards gave us a real chance to win the match.

We lost the battle on the 3rd board. It was very interesting game in blocade position. Unfortunately the opponent managed the situation better.

The score was 2,5:1,5. And then started the fourth hour of the match.

As you probably also experienced, if you play team competitions, sometimes a lit of games end at the same moment. Like in our case yesterday.

And all four of them were our wins! At first My opponent resigned after I reached the time control in the 40th move. Then we won the 7th board because of fallen flag. And immediately after that we won also on the two remaining boards.

The final score 6,5:1,5!

Here is my game. We played Ruy-Lopez. I do not know whether my opponent wanted to play the Marshal attack, but I did not want to check it that night, so I played 8.a4.

After a few moves he lost a pawn (11.Nxe5 – it was an oversight as my opponent told me after the game), but the game went to a clone of the Marshal attack. I believe it was better setup for white because of his kingside knight which was very useful defending piece.

The most problems for me were caused by darksquared bishop of the opponent, so I was happy to find a way how to erase it from the board (my 15th and 16th moves). Plus I gained second pawn up at the moment.

The rest was easy. Although black had some tactics, I was able to manage the win.

Last few days I was pretty busy at my work and also with another project, which I run, so I did not have too much time to play chess. The only game, which I played, was the ninth round of our club tournament. My opponent was a bit weaker (about 40 ELO points less than me), but tough old man. I like him because of his stubbornness, although it is very hard to play against him.

And the course of our games was exactly like that. Very very touhg game. At the beginning I gained an advantage in development of pieces, but as the position was closed and I was not able to find the right way how to open it, the opponent equalized.

Then I got an exchange, but it was a double-edged profit. Opponent’s bishop pair became very active and he created a passed b-pawn. I was able to exchange one his bishop and to fix another one to guard the pawn. And still having an extra exchange I was looking for winning the game.

At the position below my opponent’s flag fell down. Although he told me after the game that it should be a draw, I think that white can daringly hope for a win. What is your opinion? How would you evaluate the final position? BTW: Black to move.

Last week I played another game in the tournament organized by my local chess club. In that round I played against the strongest player of the tournament.

At the beginning of the game I felt like “I would be happy for one half of a point” and the game looked like that. It was in direct opposition of my older article “How to set up your mind when playing with stronger opponent“… I should learn from my articles at least…

But during a course of the game I found some tactical opportunities (around 30th move) and decided to sell my skin more expensively. So I finally started to fight.

And even being a pawn down, I was manage to overplay my opponent in rook ending. Maybe I even start to love this kind of chess endings?! The move 48.Ke5 was decisive and white equalized the game.

Last week I played 4th round of my club tournament. The opponent was known to me, we played very nice game in the previous tournament together. I won that game, so I expected his effort for revenge now. So I was prepared for battle again.

The opponent surprised me a bit by his first move 1.d4 (last time he played 1.e4), but 1.d4 is still nothing unusual, so the battle started in quite normal way.

We reached this position after 17 moves:

Here I started to think about my plan and next moves for about 25 minutes. Most of that time I was thinking about 18…. Qe3. Question for you! What do you think about this move? Would you play it or not? If not, what other move would you prefer?

In the next run of the game I was able to gain a pawn and we reached this position. Here I blundered (I still have that feeling) and played 29…. Bxb2. The game finished as a quick draw after that.

Yesterday I played the first round of the tournament in our club. We will play one round per week, so this tournament will end up in the middle of December as we are a group of 14 players.

It will not be an easy tournament for me as the opponents are quite strong and my start rank is #10. But I like tournaments like this because it gives me the opportunity to play with a bit stronger players and learn something from them.

The first game was quite interesting (maybe “dramatic for the players” is the more suitable collocation), but full of mistakes. At first I acquired an advantage, but then I lost it and even was afraiding about the game. Happily I found a good way to exchanges of pieces and to the draw ending.

Here is a fragment from the game. Would you find black’s move after 12.Qd2?

Hopefully, the quality of my game will be higher in next games.