Wednesday 4 June 2008

Spondon Summer Open Round 1

Last night was the first round of the Spondon Summer Open, an 8 round swiss tournament that runs during the off-season summer break and attracts players from other local clubs that close over the summer.

[Event "Spondon Summer Open"]
[Date "2008.06.03"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Phil Smith"]
[Black "Dean Madden"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B01"]

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Qf3 Qxf3 4. Nxf3 Nf6 5. h3 Bf5 6. d3 Nc6 7. c3 O-O-O 8. d4 g6 9. Ng5 Be6 10. Nxe6 fxe6 11. Bc4 e5 12. dxe5 Nxe5 13. Be2 Bg7 14. Be3 Kb8 15. O-O Nd5 16. Bd4 Rhg8 17. Bxe5 Bxe5 18. Bf3 Nf4 19. Na3 Nd3 20. Rab1 Rgf8 21. Nc4 Bf6 22. Na5 c6 23. Bxc6 bxc6 24. Nxc6+ Ka8 25. Nxd8 Rxd8 26. Rfd1 e5 27. g3 e4 28. Kf1 Kb7 29. Ke2 Bg5 30. f3 exf3+ 31. Kxf3 Ne5+ 32. Ke4 Re8 33. Kd5 Kc7 34. Re1 Bf6 35. Rbd1 Bg7 36. b4 Rd8+ 37. Kc5 Bf8+ 38. Kb5 Rb8+ 39. Ka4 Nc4 40. Kb3 Na5+ 41. Ka4 Nc4 42. Kb3 Na5+ 43. Kc2 Nc4 44. Rd4 Na3+ 45. Kb2 Nb5 46. Rc4+ Kb6 47. Re6+ Bd6 48. a4 1-0


I played Phil Smith, the same opponent I played in Round 1 last year. I managed a draw then, but last night played as black against him for the first time and lost.

He played an unusual 3rd move of Qf3, I was a bit worried how to defend against it so just exchanged queens.

My 8th move was a mistake, I played g6 above, allowing his knight to move to g5, attacking f7. This weakened the pawn structure.

By move 22 he'd taken a rook and 2 pawns for a knight and a bishop. I thought I'd blundered to allow him to do this, but Fritz still gives me the advantage. However I think you need a lot of skill to co-ordinate and prove that two minor pieces are better than a rook.

I was desperate to keep my rook on the board and tried to keep the bishop and knight active, and did quite well for a while.

The big move I missed was at move 38 above. I'd just been checking and chasing his king around, so automatically played Bf8+, i.e. as Bobby Fischer said: 'Patzer sees check, patzer gives check'.

I should have played Nd3+ instead, winning a rook for a knight. His rooks then forced the advantage and I resigned on move 48 below.


I'm on holiday for round 2 next week, so will hopefully do better in round 3!

Update:

Here's the game in the ChessFlash application, see ChessFlash.com for more details.

6 comments:

Glenn Wilson said...

Interesting game. I thought that you might like to see your game in the embeddable ChessFlash PGN viewer:

Smith-Madden-SpondonSummerOpen

Dean said...

Thanks Glenn, it looks like a great app. I'll do a few tests of it when I get some free time.

Glenn Wilson said...

Dean: Thanks a lot for trying this out. If you wanted to optimize the appearance to match your blog you might try two things:
1. add &dark=669922 to the FlashVars values (it occurs in two places). This will make the dark colors in the viewer match your blog background.

2. change both "width" statements to width="100%" to use the full text column width.

Dean said...

Thanks Glenn, I've made the changes you suggested. I've set the height to 500, I think it would look a bit better if the board was bigger but setting the height higher makes the pgn text much bigger. Dean

Glenn Wilson said...

Now one of the Color Themes you can select at ChessFlash when you create the html to embed is "Haunted Knight" which will set the dark parameter to 669922 for you.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dean,

I love the ChessFlash plugin you've added, it makes it really easy to view you games. Best of luck for the rest of the games you have in the open - I'm sure your due some much deserved victories over the next few weeks.

See you at the club soon,

Pete