{"id":1793,"date":"2012-10-19T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T23:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=1793"},"modified":"2012-10-19T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T23:00:37","slug":"good-start-in-western-states-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=1793","title":{"rendered":"Good start in Western States 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

One round down, and the Western States Open started on a positive note for me. I drew against a 2400 player named Alexander Kretchetov in only 20 moves. Before you say “grandmaster draw,” take a look at the final position.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Position after 19. ... Kc7. White to move.<\/p><\/div>\n

FEN: r1bq4\/ppk1bR2\/2n1p2p\/2p4Q\/2B1N3\/2PP4\/PP4PP\/6K1 w – – 0 20<\/p>\n

I’ve sacrificed a piece for a pawn (soon to be two) and a dangerous attack. Kretchetov played his previous move, 19. … Kc7, and then after I had already spent about two minutes thinking about my response, he said as if it was an afterthought: “Draw?”<\/p>\n

My immediate reaction was that my position must be pretty good if a 2400 player is offering a draw against me. But I didn’t see anything resembling a clear win. The main moves I looked at were 20. Nxc5, 20. Qxh6 and 20. Bb5. What would you do here? Agree to a draw or play on? If you’d play on, what move would you choose?<\/p>\n

I probably thought another five minutes and then accepted. I felt really craven to do so, because I felt sure that a Tal or a Topalov would have played on here, regardless of whether they saw a win.<\/p>\n

My decision was mostly an emotional one, not based on the position. I had played a previous game against Kretchetov (in fact, in the first round of this same tournament last year!) that was quite similar to this one, where I sacrificed two pawns and got what should have been a winning position, but I went astray and eventually lost. I wrote about it in my post, Negative two pawns are better than negative one<\/a>. I didn’t want something like that to happen again. I wanted to have something to show for my efforts, so I agreed to a draw.<\/p>\n

When we looked at the game quickly, it looked as if White is indeed winning after 20. Nxc5 Kb8 21. Nxe6 Bxe6 22. Bxe6 Qxd3 23. Rxe7. A key point that I missed at the board was that if Black takes the rook, he simply gets mated: 23. … Nxe7?? 24. Qe5+ and mate next move. Oy veh!<\/p>\n

But when I put this position on the computer, I was surprised to see that Rybka says Black is better! The point is that Black can play a long series of checks designed to wrest control over the e5 square, beginning with 22. … Qb1+ 23. Kf2 Qxb2+. I won’t give the whole line here, but the upshot is that Black eventually gets his queen to f4 with check and then takes the rook. White still gets Qe8+, but this leads to an endgame that is slightly better for Black.<\/p>\n

There is no other variation that leads to an advantage for White, either, so at least from Rybka’s point of view I did the right thing. Of course, in a game between humans absolutely anything could have happened in this position. Psychologically it would have been very difficult for Black. Even if I play the simple 20. Qxh6, he’s still got a lot of problems organizing his pieces, and the connected passed pawns on the kingside will be very dangerous. The computer may say Black is OK, but I think the onus is on Black to prove it. That’s how people like Tal and Topalov won (and win) their games.<\/p>\n

Not being in their category yet, I guess I’ll settle for the half point and vow to fight a little harder next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One round down, and the Western States Open started on a positive note for me. I drew against a 2400 player named Alexander Kretchetov in only 20 moves. Before you say “grandmaster draw,” take a look at the final position. FEN: r1bq4\/ppk1bR2\/2n1p2p\/2p4Q\/2B1N3\/2PP4\/PP4PP\/6K1 w – – 0 20 I’ve sacrificed a piece for a pawn (soon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1363,11,16,12],"tags":[2084,1651,1282,2345,729,2344,1151,683],"class_list":["post-1793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-news","category-games","category-positions","category-tournaments","tag-alexander-kretchetov","tag-courage","tag-mikhail-tal","tag-oy-veh","tag-piece-sacrifice","tag-prudence","tag-rybka","tag-veselin-topalov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1797,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions\/1797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}