Over the board games - 2017-18 season

I'm playing in division 1 of my local league this season - average opponent likely to be around 2200. I'm planning on lightly annotating and sharing my games in case anyone's interested.

This is my first game of the season, played last night in the cup against a 2150 player. I managed to win but was pretty lucky - I mis-evaluated the position after my opponent's sacrifice and had to scramble pretty hard just to keep afloat.

Thank you for sharing this game - a very exciting example of the French Defense, and the way you defended against checkmate had me on the edge of my seat!

Thanks @TatsumakiRonyk! It was a fun game to play, even if the moves weren't always completely accurate!

@FletchMK64 Fascinating game, with nice annotations. well done!

@achja Thanks - not often you see 3 exchange sacrifices in one game (do the Black ones count?).

I'm likely to be playing Black against an IM on Monday so will see how that one goes..!

@FletchMK64 Nice. Fingers crossed and good luck! :)
Maybe this chess training posting I read this week could be useful to prepare against the IM ? :
www.chess.com/blog/juniortay/thematic-training-games-the-way-to-improve-for-the-working-chess-amateur

Here's Monday's game - black against IM Simon Knott (FIDE 2326). I felt I played pretty well and held my own for most of the game but a couple of minor inaccuracies towards the time control landed me in a difficult position.



The game is adjourned (league rules) - I think the rook ending is probably losing although maybe it's not quite as bad as it looked at first glance.

EDIT: just ran it through the computer on this site and came up with something I don't think I've seen before. It gives both of us 0/0/0 for the game (10cpl vs 7cpl) even though I reckon the final position is lost for Black with best play.

Here's another Monday game - white against a player rated around 2000.

I followed my standard technique when I don't know an opening of just playing some fairly bland moves and hoping the resulting position is about level...

I also didn't see 11...g5 coming at all, but thought I reacted reasonably well to it.

The game is going to adjudication (another option in this league) in another Rook ending - is the final position a win for White, or a draw?!

@FletchMK64 #8
More on the Scandinavian Portuguese.
Spectacular win against GM De Vreugt :
http://davidsmerdon.com/?p=1738
Book review with game examples :
www.chess.com/blog/ArnieChipmunk/review-smerdons-scandinavian

I enjoyed looking through these few games here @FletchMK64 and shall be following your updates in hope of improving my own game! Good luck.