Hivechess "Candidates Tournament" week 3 - My gameplay and analysis

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We had cool games in the week 3 of the Hivechess "Candidates Tournament"! this is an event hosted by our dear friend @stayoutoftherz.

In this opportunity I played 3 games. I was able to win 2 matches and unfortunately I suffered an ugly defeat. There is still a long way to go in the tournament to determine the final results but I think I missed a key point today that I will discuss later in the analysis.

Today I managed to record the games and have a pretty nice time. The time control is great to play good games but you know that "extra second" seems too little sometimes hahahaha. Anyway, let's go straight to what happened in the games.

@pereu4ivatel vs @vjap55

My matches against @pereu4ivatel always end with some unexpected twist. The preparation of this player with the white pieces is quite interesting because he plays unconventional openings so he may surprise his opponents from very early in the match.

However, some inaccuracies on White's middlegame led to a very unfavorable situation in which the white king is in troubles since it still in the center. The first player was a bit ambitious in opening up the position when I had the bishop pair. In the position we can see that there is a lot of activity, white tries to get rid of the pin with an interesting resource "c6" but black has a very elegant solution which would leave them with extra piece, but ... I did not see it xd, I let pass the powerful Ncc5 and then things changed a lot but in the end I ended up winning this game.

@jaki01 vs @vjap55

Well, here I had my first stumble. To be honest I was surprised by the fact that jaki played 1)e4, I was expecting his usual 1)d4 but it seems he wanted to avoid any kind of preparation. In any case things didn't go so well for him in the opening as we played a Scotch in which I was very comfortable but some doubts I had in the first moves would cost me a lot of time in the endgame.

Here, I hesitated for a long time to capture the pawn and White has made a mistake by not defending it. The most usual thing is to play the bishop to f4 to protect "e5" but instead White has threatened the knight with the idea that the e5 pawn is defended for tactical reasons on the "e" file.

After wasting a lot of time, I took the pawn and White put all his strength to exploit the pin in the filewhere my king was.

How I could not remember this position! Many many years ago when I was learning to play this opening I read in an old book that the e5 pawn not being defended with the bishop could be captured because there is a variation that refutes all of White's intentions and in that book appeared this exact position.

In this position it is game over. After 12...) Qxf2!+ White doesn't have much hope, taking the king to h2 loses by 13...)Bd6 then if he plays 13)Kh1 Bxh3!! threatening mate on g2, if 14)gxh3 Qf3+ 15)Kh2 Bd6. A rather nice variation which is one of the first things that I learned when I started playing against the Scotsman but I forgot it. I took on f2 with the bishop and we ended up playing a complex ending in which my time ran out.

@B0s vs @vjap55

Finally, after losing the second game, "I got out of my seat" and started to watch the other players' games and concentrated for the next match. I just realized while writing this that today I played the three games with the black pieces lol.

My opponent played a solid London system and things were going quite well for him but he made a tactical mistake that made him lose a piece and be in a very bad position. Here is a mate in 5, let me know the answer in the comments:) Black to play!!

Well I hope you like this analysis and gameplay. I wish you a great weekend and lots of success tomorrow in the @schamangerbert tournament.

_{The video uses music licensed as CC BY 3.0 by Infraction - No Copyright Music}

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