The games from Elitserien

Today is a free day in London and except a report from the fourth round which will be published a little later I want to publish some interesting details from the games from the fourth round of Elitserien.
The position on the diagram is not from my game, but from the game on the board number 8.
We have some hopes that White maybe could win this position, but not so realistic (All right we were desperate).
Nobody could imagine that we will lose on this board (Should I remind you that Eksjö SK player was White? ).
Let´s see what happened.


Nordström Per Olov - Carlhammar Magnus

White played (I do not know the number of moves so I will just randomly put 55):

55. Rf5??

Black of course took a present.

55...Kxf5

White resigned as his pawn can be easily stopped.

56. f7, Rf4+
57. Ke3, Kg5 -+

White could try the same idea with:

55. Rxh5, Kxh5
56. f7

Black has to take a draw with:

56...Ra1
57. Kf2, Ra2+ e.t.c.

Back to my game against FM Peter Vas.

Vas Peter E2305 - Bejtovic Jasmin E2387

After the opening we got typical position in The Hedgehog System. The initial variation was Taimanov Sicilian which means that White got a position with the displaced knight on a3.

I just started to improve the position of  my bad piece, the knight on c6 that belongs on d7.
White tried to put a pressure against my pawn on b6 that is not so dangerous.
However, that was not worsened White´s position.
The real problem came when Peter thought that a good idea is to double the rooks on the d-file.
As you can see from the short-comments in the chess viewer I could play the typical breakthrough d6-d5 on two or three occasions, but I choose the moment when I thought that it would be the most unpleasant to meet.
Of course, I think that the moment I decided to play d6-d5 was objectively the best moment, not just psychologically.

So this is the moment when I played:

16...d5!

After this pawn sacrifice it is only a question can White keep the position in the balance.
It is obvious that he has to play:

17. cxd5, exd5
18. Nxd5

In this position the most natural way to play is to take with the knight from f6 and than to play b6-b6 (after obligatory move Bd6) restricting the knight on a3. What was the problem with this is that tactics works in White´s favour.
It is strange that I have to take the knight with my bishop.

This is the position from the analysis.
It could be reached if I took:

18...Bxd5
19. exd5, Bd6
20. Kh1, b5

The knight on a3 is still out of play. White needs to spend two or three tempi to get the knight back to play.
White´s rooks are not so good as they are defending the pawn that is firmly blocked by Black´s pieces.
My rooks has much more perspective on c and e files.
Do not forget my firm control on dark squares which would be occupied by my knights. Black is at least not worse in this position.
it can be that the position is in balance but I would prefer to play with Black pieces.

Instead of this I took on d5 with my knight.
After that we played logical continuation that can be seen in the chess viewer.
The problem for me was that he could temporary sacrifice a piece on b5 and my queen would be overloaded by defending tasks.
It was just a two mutual blunders!
In any case I do not think that I was lost there, but it would be almost impossible to win.
I have to point out one important think.
If I analysed this game just with moves (without text explanations) one could get wrong impression that the move b6-b5 should not be played.
This move is logical continuation of the pawn sacrifice and it is a very good move in the strategical terms.
It did not worked in a specific situation because I did not made the right circumstances for it.
If I took on d5 with my bishop than b6-b5 would be a good move.
However, these tactical possibilities were overlooked by both of us, and the game continued naturally.

All of a sudden after Nh5 he got many problems to solve.
My idea is not just Qh4 which would win on the spot, but also Ng3 in the right moment and then Bxg3. It would be very hard to defend against such an attack.
He did only possible and shifted his rook on the fourth rank.

24. Rd4

....and in the next move:

25. Rg4

The details what would happen if he did not shift his rook on g4 can be seen in the chess viewer.
Soon I played the winning move h7-h5 that took advantage of overloading of his defencive resources.

At this point the game was already decided.
The rest is indeed a matter of technique, but I still think that the way that I opened the long diagonal can be instructive.

30...h4
31. g4, h3
32. gxh3, Rxe2
33. Rxe2, Bxd5

White needs to sacrifice an exchange on e8 in order to postpone catasrophe on f3-square.
It did not help him as I won on the autopilot.

The chess viewer version: