This is my fifth round loss from the Space Coast Chess Festival. I think Winawer fans will find it interesting, as well as endgame fans.
I have some opening references and analysis embedded at move 7, but non-e4-or-French players can safely skip that part.
I think the rook and minor piece (and later just good knight vs bad bishop) ending is very interesting. It is the second of two games in the tournament where I accurately evaluated the resulting ending, but my technique was not up to the task. I have noticed a pattern for myself where I see one potential winning path and pursue it with tunnel vision, and miss other opportunities to resolve the matter in a much cleaner manner.
In any event, analyzing this game after the tournament has provided the most learning value for me, so I thought others might learn from my mistakes as well.
A final note on how it ends. I spent 24 hours trying to clarify how I felt, and the best way to describe it is that I felt like a preschooler who was supposed to be potty-trained, but had an "accident" in my pants at the end of the school day. If nothing else, it helps me laugh a bit!
Superficially, it would seem that white would have the better of a bishop vs knight ending with pawns on both sides of the board, but black has better pawns (they can camp on light squares, immune to white's bishop), a centralized knight with outposts, and a more centralized king. White's king will also struggle to penetrate the black kingside. That said, it is not as much of an advantage as I thought it was, and I lost my objectivity as the game went on.
ReplyDeleteI'd be salivating at having that ending as Black. But what's the response to 29 Rd7? Just going to repeat positions?
It's as though people are allergic to rook endings.
"Uh, how do you please to these charges?"
"Guilty!"
I am probably a little too critical of the rook exchange, but Rd4 seems safer. If white plays Rd7 instead black can safely snag the f4 pawn with more threats in place, and white is worse than with the trade. I guess the short answer is "No, definitely not repeating!"
DeleteOkay, you 58th move is uglier than my failure to take the rook that I had gone to the trouble of attacking, but only because it changed the result of the game.
ReplyDelete