Thursday, March 08, 2007

The Caro-Kann-can

Applying the knowledge I’ve collected thus far is the hardest transition. ( where Applied Knowledge= experience). In this week’s quest, I was playing the black side of a caro-Kann and made a conscious decision mid game to follow a plan ( turned out to be a bad one…but a bad plan is better than none). The game was a classic mainline “chase the bishop” type:

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Bg6 6, h4 h6 7. h5 Bh7 8. Bd3 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 Nf6 10 Nf3 Nbd7 11. Bf4
I am black against a 1700 player. I thought of playing 10... Qc7 to prevent 11. Bf4 adn prepare for caslting but I realized I should have developed the Nbd7 befor the Ngf6 and was doing a little a "course correction. Vulnerable is e5 and I needed to get my defenses into gear.

The game followed: 11... Nd5 ( playing Qa5+ is a suggestion from the book.... did I really have the luxury of moving this piece again?... well at least I am making him move HIS piece again too) 12. Bd2 e6 13. c4 N5f6 ( interesting would have been Nb4 the move I chose was a little too passive). 14. 0-0-0 c5 15. Bc3 cxd4 16. Nxd4 Rc8 and now he played this move 17 Nxe6 !
Up to this point, My plan was that i saw a way to open up the c-file ( thus the push with c5 and Rc8 ). I've gotten sucker punched several times on the minor piece sac on e6 in the CK ... you'd think I'd learn. This was strong... I knew I was hosed if I take the piece ( 17... fxe6 18 Qg6+ Ke7 19 Bb4+ and I lose the queen .. becuase my only defense is the knight blocking). I knew i had to dance around this and I focused the next series of moves on grabbing the initiative and working on the exposed c-file and I almost pulled it off:
17...Qb6 18. Nxf8 ( Which way to go... king x might have been best but I wanted to get my other rook in the game ..at all costs) 18...Nxf8 19. Rhe1+ Ne6 20. Bxf6 ( saw that...again I didn't want to settle for passive play) 20...0-0 21. Bd4 Qb5 22. Kb1 Rxc4 23. Bc3 Rfc8 24. Ka1 Nc5 25.Qe3 Na4 26. Be5 Re2 27. Qb3 and then I saw this ...it looked great... I thought I was back in the game 27... Qxe5?!
If white takes the queen I have a forced win! ( 28..Rc1+ 29. Rxc1 Rxc1#) I saw and dismissed 28. Qxc2 because of the recapture with my rook ... and again had the drool on my beard thinking I pulled off a good decoy tactic. But White indeed played the redeeming in between move and the game continued miserably down hill from there:
28...Rxc2 29 Rxe5 Rxf2 30. Re2 Rf6 31. Red2 Nc5 32. Kb1 Re6 33. Rd5 b6 34. Rd8+ Kh7 35. b5 Na4 36. R8d3 Rc6 37. Rc1 Re6 38. Rd7 a5 39. bxa5 bxa5 40. Rd4 Rb6+ 41 Ka1 and having made the first time control ... I resigned.

I want to thank Steve for the FEN diagram utility.
I am off to the eastern class championship this weekend! I hope to apply more knowledge and less blunders

-BP

2 comments:

Dean said...

Great blog, I've enjoyed reading it through from the start! I wish I could blunder as little as you do.

Montse said...

BP,

I blundered, yesterday, awfully. I missed 2 times an easy tactic. Missed an easy bishop fork on my two rooks and second one was a knight fork on my queen and rook. Guess what? I compensated by creating two new Queeens. That's a killer.