'12-13 Game 2

Round 1 of the Southwest Open was against fellow blogger Ivan (1863).  As I type this post, he has won his first three games, lost his fourth, won his fifth ... and when I left the playing hall after my round 6, he was up in his game.

This was the first OTB game in a month for me.  I felt pretty good in the opening, even went up a pawn, but then he outplayed me in the end.  I played w/ the black pieces.  Here's the full game below.

On move 21, he took my bishop (Bxb7).  I did a bit of miscalculating and retook with my rook instead of my queen.  I was a bit concerned about him playing Nxg6 fxg6 Bxd6 (forking my rooks).  But I didn't take that line one more move ... instead of playing fxg6, I would play Bxh2 Nxf8 followed by me responding with Bd6 ... I would have been ok with that.

But instead, after Bxb7, I played Qxb7 and that allowed him to get the pawn back.

After that, I tried to expel his bishop and then get an attack going with my queen and knight, but his rooks and queen came barreling down my queenside ... and along with his bishop, he delivered a nice tactic by sacrificing his queen for a mate.

This was the first round of the 4-day and as such, it was played on a Friday night, with the playing hall about 1/4th full and with mostly adults at that.  This was the most quiet round of the tournament.  Rounds 2-7 were quite noisy for this smaller playing hall with lots of scholastic players.