Lessons Learned - Part 4

Rook and King on same file allows for lots of tactics

My knight is stuck there since a long time, and since a long time I plan to play d4 freeing up my knight. But in my imagination (and in the previous positions), this was always met by counterpush c4 and now the knight needs to go to d2 and the d4 pawn is loose, I did not like it too much.

But, now its different. The black d pawn is gone and I have castled, so now the enemy king and my rook are on the same file, with only my pawn in the way. So the c4 threat does not exist anymore, since now 1. d4 c4 2. dxe5+ is absolutely devastating.

That means that black can only take the pawn, which is what I wanted all along, so that my knight gets activated. Here, black is lost, because after all the trades (1. d4 cxd4 2. Nxd4 Bxd4 3. Rxd4 Qxd4 4.Rd1! wins the queen and the threat on blacks weak king is too stong (with white's queen coming in).

I did not even consider this move, and that's really not okay, I blitzed out c3 because it looked like the only reasonable answer..

Do not let the opponent break into your position! Open the way for yourself to break in instead!

This was an intense game. It was long and closed, and I had the whole time a slightly better position. But I can't find a way to break through, and finally the momentum shifts to the kingside. I just played Ke6 to open the way for my rook and queen and to activate my king more. (also, this aims to place the king on d6 at some point, dominating the knight and protecting my weak c pawn, but this I was not so aware of..)

I saw that there are two things happening in this position:

• One the queenside, there is pressure against blacks backwards pawn and there's a super annoying knight blockading my passed pawn and pressuring my pawns.
• On the kingside, there's only two pawn breaks left, a4 and a5. They need to happen from both sides as it opens up lines towards the king, for queen and rooks.

My opponent prepares the a4 push by bringing his queen with Qc2. I am a bit blind to the threat and continue with my knight routing plan, Nh6, defending f5 and threatening to jump into g4 challenging the enemy knight.

And now my opponent correctly plays a4. I saw this, and I thought I must take because if I don't, he is going to go to a5. So I took, bxa4?!, which is not very good because now his queen is coming for free. Better would have been to play a5! myself, since I need to play it at somepoint anyway, and it's also dealing with the problem of the enemy pawn going to a5. Also, this was likely the last good opportunity I had to play a5, it's only going to get more difficult from now on.

1. Qxa4 Qb7 2. Ra1 and now I am getting scared, he's starting his comeback.. Here I realized the importance of needing to play a5, and thought I need to support it with ...Ra8?. Problem is, White i coming in too fast now.

3. Qa5?! not the best move because I also forgot about Henry, which is hanging after Qd1!. But this move is still very good, because its hard to not mess up, especially on low time. There's Knight sacking ideas, there's c pawn push ideas, there's Queen coming to c5 check ideas (that I completely oversaw oops)..

3. ...Qc7?? "Queen trade?". Yes but 4. Qc5+!. Oh shit, now I fucked up: 4. ...Ke6 5. Ra6 Kd7 6. Nxd6! and now its over, everything falls apart. Taking the knight results in a catastrophic queen fork, and just moving the queen out of the way looses to other tricks, Knight checks or skewers, does not matter.

How did I come from a stable closed position to this? I did not respect enough the opponent infiltrating my position, I should have already earlier blast open the kingside with my own a5 and then bring my queen and rooks and I would be fine.

PS: My opponent is very kind and lets me survive a little bit longer since instead of taking the free win with Qxd5!, he instead just trades queens and grabs the knight (6. ...cxd5 7. Qxc7+ Kxc7 8. Rxa6) and now we are in a rook endgame, where I still have very slim chances if he misplays something (sneaky foreshadowing..).

The king CAN stop the pawn in an endgame and is NOT forced to take "free" pawns

He did mess up. Here, I am desperate and try to push my passed pawn to force him to take it so that i can take his c pawn and somehow survive this 2 v 3 endgame.

But, against all odds, after e3, he play's the unexpected 1. Kb4??. Not at all respecting my passed pawn, and now loosing because 1... Re4 and he can't stop my pawn anymore. So I win right? What about his f pawn? 2. f6, scary but no worries, we already know this one of my first Lesson learned, my King can stop the pawn and my opponents king cannot.

Simple, trade the rooks, and then push my passer, and if the enemy passer comes to close, just bring the King.

But then I saw something. After the rook trades, the pawn takes back and my king is checked. I take back the pawn and suddenly the c pawn escapes. Or so I thought. Indeed, the hypothetical 2. ...Rxe5 3. dxe5+ Kxe5 now looses to very simply, because we will even loose our Queen in the end to a skewer.

But... why again I am *forced *to take back the pawn on e5? Well... I don't know. Just play Ke6 and now we're hardcore chilling.

So, not seeing this at all, I am calmly giving away my win with 3. ...e2 4. f7 e1=Q 5. f8=Q+ it's a check, sad life.