May 21 2006
Drawn
I was really hoping my first post related to a chess game against ZaBlanc would be glorifying a fantastic win, something I have never done against him. Instead, it's a post glorifying a fantastic game that resulted in a draw. Regardless of the players, this game was absolutely fascinating. Every position was agonizing to analyze and play and any bad move would have given the initiative to the other player. Neither player had an advantage materially throughout the game, and neither player had much positional advantage, either.
I was playing white, ZaBlanc black. The game ended in the position in the diagram above. At this point, with white to move, king would move to f8 then black's queen to c8+. White's king would move out of check back to f7 and the position in the diagram would be repeated with Qe6+.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the game was the fact that all the major and minor pieces on the board were captured leaving a only pawns — nearly all of them — on the board in nearly indentical structures. With one excpetion… the white pieces are slightly more advanced down the board than black's, and the opportunity for promotion is far greater.
As white, I had the initiative because of the slightly better pawn structure and I should have won the game. In fact, the analysis from ChessMaster 9000 showed that I blew a won game twice, the second one after ZaBlanc unknowingly gave me a second chance with a bad move. I promoted first and ZaBlanc promoted on the very next move. To keep the initiative in the game I needed to keep black's king in check, but I saw an opportunity to promote another pawn and left the king out of check, knowing that the initiative would shift (I thought only temporarily) to black. I never regained the initiative and black worked out a draw.
Nevertheless, neither white nor black can complain about the draw. The game was a blast and should probably be annotated and reviewed again later.
Here's the PGN:
[Event "Challenge"]
[Site "http://www.redhotpawn.com"]
[Date "2006.05.08"]
[Round "?"]
[White "BuckyKatt"]
[Black "ZaBlanc"]
[TimeControl "-"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Bd3 Ngf6 6.Nxf6+ Nxf6 7.Nf3 Bg4 8.h3 Bh5 9.Bg5 Bxf3 10.Qxf3 Qxd4 11.c3 Qe5+ 12.Qe3 Qxe3+ 13.Bxe3 Nd5 14.Bd4 Nf4 15.Be4 e6 16.Be5 Nd5 17.c4 Bb4+ 18.Ke2 Nb6 19.b3 0-0 20.Rhd1 Rad8 21.Rd3 Rxd3 22.Bxd3 f6 23.a3 Be7 24.Bc7 Nd7 25.b4 Bd8 26.Bxd8 Rxd8 27.Rd1 g6 28.f4 c5 29.Be4 Kf7 30.Bxb7 Ke7 31.Bc6 e5 32.g3 f5 33.b5 Nb6 34.Rxd8 Kxd8 35.Bd5 Nxd5 36.cxd5 e4 37.a4 Kd7 38.g4 c4 39.a5 fxg4 40.hxg4 h5 41.f5 gxf5 42.gxh5 f4 43.h6 f3+ 44.Kf2 c3 45.h7 c2 46.h8Q e3+47.Kxf3 c1Q 48.Qg7+ Kd6 49.b6 Qf1+ 50.Kxe3 Qe1+ 51.Kf4 Qf2+ 52.Kg5 Qg3+ 53.Kf6 Qe5+ 54.Kg6 Qe4+ 55.Kf6 Qe5+ 56.Kg6 Qe4+ 57.Kg5 Qxd5+ 58.Kg6 Qe4+ 59.Kf7 Qe6+ 60.Kf8 Qc8+ 61.Kf7 Qe6+ 1/2-1/2