My Best Win…So Far

Being on the last leg of the semester and heading into the holidays left me little time to blog over the last few days. Fortunately, I have been able to keep up with the World Championship and despite the closing window of opportunity, I continue to cheer for Anand. However, this week brought me a semi-championship of my own in terms of my personal chess growth: my highest-rated win…ever.

Earlier this week, I beat a 1400 ELO rated player at 24hrs per move on Chess.com. This was an exceptional win and going back over the moves, it has become one of my personal favorite games I have ever played. Normally, I would wait for the weekend review to annotate this game, but I just could not wait!

[pgn]
[Event “Let’s Play!”]
[Site “Chess.com”]
[Date “2014.11.16”]
[Round “?”]
[White “AmishHacker”]
[Black “1401”]
[Result “1-0”]
[WhiteElo “1142”]
[BlackElo “1401”]
[PlyCount “29”]
[EventDate “2014.??.??”]
[TimeControl “1”]

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 {I am very familiar with this position. It comes up
quite often when I am playing Black. However, the big question comes with
what Black’s Queen will do in response to the obvious 3.Nc5…} 3. Nc3 Qd8 {
This was an interesting move and I believe that it set the tone for the rest
of the game. Black had a number of better moves including 3…Qa5, which
would have developed the Queen and maintained some control on the board. At
this point, White retains a significant amount of the initiative.} 4. d4 Nf6 5.
Nf3 e6 6. Bc4 b6 7. O-O Bb7 8. Qe1 {My plan here was to attack the e6 pawn
with my light squared Bishop as a way of opening up the King to some forced
moves. However, I had to be careful of the Queen possibly moving to d7 and
blocking a relatively simple (and obvious) trap.} Qc8 $4 {Another strange move.
Black moves his Queen away from the King and makes my attack job much easier.}
9. d5 {Anticipating 9…exd5, but it did not happen!} e5 $4 10. Qxe5+ $1 Be7
11. Re1 {Black is in a real and immediate danger. White now has a huge
battery bearing down on the Black King’s position.} O-O {This was Black’s best
move, according to Stockfish, but the Bishop is still lost.} 12. Qxe7 c5 13.
Bg5 Nbd7 {I sat on this position for quite a while because I knew that any
misstep would allow Black to get back into the game. Ultimately, I decided
that I needed to remove one of the Knights to allow for some counterplay if
Black decided to attack my Queen.} 14. Ne4 Qe8 15. Nxf6+ {Black resigned.} 1-0
[/pgn]

Black could have continued to play, but his position was severely compromised. It was an important victory for me, especially considering my recent struggles. Check back Sunday for Weekend Review as I cover two more important 24 hour games!