Game from Nationals

Originally this post was meant to be in the grand tradition in chess of cherry-picking the best games for annotation. But it's been so long since the tournament, that I feel obliged to combine it with the equally grand blogging tradition of apologizing for my lack of recent posting activity.

But without further ado, I give you Richie's penultimate game from the nationals. This particular game is an interesting example because I think it very much highlights how his chess has developed in the last six months or so.

The first aspect I would point out was that until move 6 both players were playing along what is widely considered to be the critical main line for the two knights defense.

The main move of interest in the game was 8...Bxf2! This was part of a basic combination that nets a pawn and prevents the opponent from castling but from a chess development standpoint it is interesting because it shows a reading depth of around five or six plies (half-moves) even in the early opening and it appears to have been part of a plan to simplify into a probably winning endgame which is something he would have been reluctant to do half a year ago.

In general I would say his moves are beginning to involve more positional considerations than before (although this game was ultimately decided by a simple fork tactic).