2024 Maia Open - Round 3
Training Log
Classical Game - 2 hours, 10 minutes
Post-mortem - 20 minutes
Round 3 of the Maia Open. To be honest I was quite tilted at the start of the game. Right before the round I found out that Dojo might be streaming a “Viewer Rapid Arena” instead of my classical game. I found this quite strange — I had told the gang about my plans to dual stream the tournament with TheChessNerd.
So it was quite frustrating to find out that the stream would be bumped. On my own channel! This is the first tournament where we’ve got live video of a Dojo sensei (me, David Pruess, Jesse Kraai) playing a classical OTB event. And quite a nice event too! But what can you do — I had to try to stay focused on the game.
Starting with 1.c4, I immediately misplayed the opening and was much worse with White after 7 moves (!) . Fortunately, my opponent, a young Dutch player, hung a pawn to a simple tactic on move 8. It took me 10 minutes to convince myself that it was truly a blunder and I wasn’t missing anything, and I grabbed the pawn. Successfully. From there it wasn’t over, but my opponent likely got quite upset, and quickly collapsed.
This was a tough moment since Black had just blundered a pawn, but 1…a5! would offer the most counterplay from here. After 2.Ba3 a4 3.Qb5 (Qc2 or Qd1 allow the unpleasant Qa5+) Ra5 4.Qe2 b5! =/∞, Black would have plenty of play. Instead the game continued 1…Qf6?! 2.f3 a5? where after 3.Ba3+- Black was already busted.
3/3! Round 4 tomorrow.