Canadian Open Round 4

My 4th round game in Toronto was a bit of a debacle. My opponent avoided my preparation and played a line of the french that I was very uncomfortable with. In fact, at the time, if I had to pick a single line that I would have avoided at all costs, it would have been the one Martchenko played. Good job on his part for sniffing that one out.

Frankly, losing this game was a real downer because two rounds prior I was practically leading the tournament, and now I was back down with 2/4. To make matters worse, it felt like I was playing against a database during this game - all of the moves having been played before and my opponent spewing out the best responses effortlessly and without delay. To my credit, though, I played some good moves to reach my demise. Rybka evaluates the critical position as equal, although I suspect it's because I'm up 2 pawns and it can't evaluate white's attacking potential fully. Unfortunately, I think I'm just busted after taking the d4 pawn.

I'm going to present the game with some light annotations because it's depressing to go into more detail.

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 Ne7 5. a3 Bxc3+ 6. bxc3 c5 7. h4 Nbc6 8. Nf3 Qa5 9.Bd2

So far, so good. My problem, as far as my opening repertoire was concerned, was that I was completely unfamiliar with the h4 systems where white plays Nf3 instead of h5. In fact, in my last-minute opening prep with Robert, where I played against Rybka for 20 moves, we had looked at the line where white pushes h5 and I did just fine after accepting the gambitted pawn on d4. Here, though, things are entirely different because white has played a much more useful move than h5 - he has developed a piece. This makes all the difference, but I failed to realize this at the time.

9...cxd4 10. cxd4 Qa4 11. Bd3 Nxd4 12. Rb1

It was at this point that I felt something had gone horribly wrong. In the lines I was expecting, i.e., if white would have played h5, everything works for black. Here, though, it's all bad. Despite this, I was faced with some tough choices in the following sequence of moves, and I made the correct moves each time.

12...Nec6 13. Bb4 Nxf3+ 14.Qxf3 Nxe5 15. Qg3 Nxd3+ 16. cxd3 Rg8 17. O-O a5 18. Bc5 Ra6??

I think I'll leave the finish up to your imagination. White to play and win.