Today I had another chess tournament. I knew it was really important for my club so I tried my best. Did I win or loose and what happens now?

Today I had another chess tournament. I knew it was really important for my club so I tried my best. Did I win or loose and what happens now?

Introduction

Yes, you heard it right. This was the most important tournament I've played so far.

Not because of me, but because of the Club I'm in.
As far as I'm concerned, this tournament decided if we stay in our current class or if we go down.

Time and moves

In total I played a bit more then 2 hours with a total of 62 move pairs, meaning me and my opponent played that each.

But I have to say, it really didn't feel like we spent this much time.
We both had over an hour on our clock at the end.

It was a classical game, so 1:30 hours to start, 30 seconds bonus time per move and an extra 30 minutes at the 40th move.

The game

We both started equal.
I've played with white and started with D4, the queens pawn opening.
It quickly developt into a Queen's Gambit Declined: Three Knights Variation.

If you're interested, this is the PGN of the game:

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Nf3 Nc6 
5. Bf4 a6 6. e3 Bb4 7. Be2 Ne4 8. Qc2 Nxc3 
9. bxc3 Bd6 10. Bxd6 Qxd6 11. c5 Qe7 12. O-O O-O 
13. h4 h6 14. h5 f5 15. Kh2 e5 16. Kg1 e4 17. Nh2 f4 
18. f3 Bf5 19. fxe4 Bxe4 20. Bd3 Rae8 21. exf4 Bxd3 
22. Qxd3 Qe3+ 23. Qxe3 Rxe3 24. Rac1 Re2 25. Ra1 Rc2 
26. Rf3 Re8 27. Raf1 Ree2 28. R1f2 Rxa2 29. Rxe2 Rxe2 
30. Rf2 Re3 31. Rf3 Re8 32. f5 a5 33. Nf1 b6 
34. Ne3 Ne7 35. f6 gxf6 36. Rxf6 a4 37. cxb6 cxb6 
38. Rxb6 Ra8 39. Rb2 a3 40. Ra2 Ra5 41. Nc2 Nf5 
42. Rxa3 Rxa3 43. Nxa3 Ng3 44. c4 Ne2+ 45. Kf2 Nxd4 
46. cxd5 Kf7 47. Ke3 Nf5+ 48. Ke4 Ng3+ 49. Ke5 Nxh5 
50. Kd6 Nf4 51. Nc2 Nxg2 52. Kc7 Nf4 53. d6 Ne6+ 
54. Kc8 h5 55. d7 h4 56. Nd4 h3 57. Nxe6 h2 
58. d8=Q h1=Q 59. Qd7+ Kf6 60. Nc7 Qh8+ 61. Qd8+ Qxd8+ 62. Kxd8 *

I also put it in the engine on Lichess.org, the full game can be viewed in this Studie.

I remember that while playing, it felt equal most of the time. The engine shows that I was wrong and that in reality, I had an advante most of the time.

Then, on move 28, I threw my whole advantage away by letting the rook in.
On move 37, I got some of the advantage back but between these moves, black was actually better.

At some point, it was even as high as 6.4. But I made the wrong move and all all of my advantage was gone.

If I had just made the right king move, I could've defended my very important G2 pawn and some moves later got a knight fork.
With no knights at the board, I would've had 3 pawns and my opponent 1.

The king just couldn't defend all three of them from becoming a queen.
The Qeen and King endgame would've been easily winning for me.

But I made the wrong king move, lost my G2 and H5 pawns and it was knight and pawn for each side.

I got my king forward and made the way for my pawn, not stoppable by the enemy king.

From there, it was basically a run of the pawns. Tho I knew we both would be able to make a queen.

Nd4 on move 56 was brilliant in my opinion.
Sacrificing my knight as a distraction to make a queen and stop the enemy pawn.

The engine disagrees, thinking it was just a normal move, but what does Stockfish know, right?

Anyway, my opponent didn't fall for it and just pushed his outside pawn.

I took his knight and we both promoted to a queen with our pawns.

Queen and Knight against Queen is just a draw.

And after Qh8 from my opponent, I maybe could've blocked with the knight and tried on, but it was obvious none of us could win.
So I blocked with my Queen, checking him, we traded and it was a draw by insufficiant material.

My toughts

My opponent was cleary stronger and for a long time I tought it was a draw and I was okay with it.

Now knowing I could've won with just one right king move annoys me, but afterwards you're always smarter, nothing that would bother me too much tho.

Considering the strenth of my opponent, a draw is a huge success for me, especially after my last game, where I blundered my knight on move 15.
At the start of 13, I knew I can't move my pawn to C6 since that would've blocked my knights only escape square, but after 20 minutes of complete overthinking, I pushed exactly that pawn.
You can view this game on this lichess study.

Footer

A fun game with lots of missed winning chances, but I think I did well.
My opponent had a DWZ (Basically the official german elo) of 1580.
I don't have an official rating just yet, but at the moment I'm considered around 1000 1100.

But in total, we still lost 2.5:3.5

Very annoying, but it is what it is.

Hope you enjoyed this little jouney of my chess tournament and if you'd like, either write an issue on Codeberg (as a comment) or if you're seeing this on blog.spoljarevic.sh, you can just write a comment under this blog post (after creating an account for free).

That's it for today and remember, Stay private. Stay root!