Well the following game was a shocker on a number of levels. I had an accuracy rating of 40% as did my opponent and I made a huge opening misstep, yet somehow I managed to win the game?! Lots to take away from this game though as I continue to grow and develop my chess skills.
A few weeks ago Hikaru Nakamura won the GCT St Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament. Hikaru is an insane blitz player. He is great at finding solutions in fast time formats. He won the event without a single loss which is pretty incredible seeing that he played 27 rounds against some of the best players in the world. Even crazier is that his rating actually went down a little due to the number of draws he had and so he lost his number one rating spot to Magnus Carlsen who did not play in the event.
Here is a great win over Fabiano Caruana. I often reach the same position after 7… d5 and so I found it interesting to see how Hikaru responded in this game.
There were some exciting exchanges with the queens and two knights coming off the board and then Hikaru played the sophisticated 13. Nd2 which I was surprised by. The idea is to develop his knight, bringing the piece into the action and maintaining the pressure on black’s position.
2021 GCT St Louis Rapid & Blitz Read More »
In this game I manage to come back from a slightly bad position to force a draw. It was a game where I could have easily overextended, but I played solid chess and found the draw.
Here is a blitz game where I face the Deferred Schliemann Defense. I mention in the annotations that I played against the Schliemann Defense in an over the board game against a young Anton Smirnov who is now a Grandmaster and Australia’s number one player. Click here to see that game.
This game had a few interesting ideas. I rarely face the Schliemann Defense, so it is an opening I need to look into a bit more, particularly as someone who loves to play the Ruy Lopez.