Game one of the final just ended without satisfaction for either side. The game started out in fairly generic fashion. Mrkajz44 was fairly aggressive in pushing his b and c pawns, which became the main focus of the middle game, as allowing them to remain connected and that far advanced in an endgame seemed like a recipe for disaster. I thought a couple times that I had found a way to win both pawns and save my own b pawn, giving up my bishop pair in the process, but my opponent always had the answer and I ultimately had to settle for equal trades
Move 25 is where things got really interesting, as mrkajz44 pushed his pawn to e4. This took away the extra tempo I need to protect b2, so I resigned myself to having to take on c5 to protect my knight, giving up the b2 pawn and ending up all even at the end. But after Qxb2, I didn’t like that the queen would be adding an attacker to d4, so I want to look at kicking the queen out right away. I could move my rook to b1, kicking out the queen cutting off the entire b-file, and thought to myself, “That actually looks close to a queen trap. Wait, might that actually be a queen trap? After Rc1, the queen actually only has one safe square – A3. After it goes to A3, I can go Rd3 and it’s a real honest-to-goodness queen trap! This could be exactly the break I need. I just need him to take that hanging pawn. Take the pawn. It’s only natural. I captured. You want to re-capture. It’s undefended. “Oh no, my pawn”. Please take the pawn?”
Around this time, I figure he had gone to bed, as it was pretty late. It wasn’t until 10 hours later that the cliffhanger was resolved and my glorious queen trap was declined with exd4. Devastating. One of the great things about chess is playing against strong opponents to challenge you, but one of the worst things about chess is when your opponent is just a little too strong and all of your best ideas are refuted before you even get a chance to let them out of the box.
So after exd4, I went Rxd4 and he got the pawn back with qxb2, which no longer traps the queen. I really wanted to work out a line with Nb3, daring mrkajz44 to take my queen and threatening all kinds of back rank issues for him. Unfortunately, I was not able to figure out how to refute Qxd4, as my own back rank was equally vulnerable. If I took his queen with my own, he could go Rxc1+ first, forcing Nxc1 and leaving my queen undefended when the rook finally takes it back. If I took with the knight, he could take my own queen back and I couldn’t recapture his rook without allowing Nf5, winning my knight because moving it would allow Rd1#. Another nice idea I got really excited for, which ultimately just didn’t work.
I then had ideas of Rf4, threatening the nasty check on f7, but if he responded with Rd5, I didn’t see a good way forward and would likely lose my knight at minimum, since I always had to be extremely careful to guard the rook on c1 with my queen.
Ultimately, I went for the safe route, with rxd8+, forcing rxd8 and created an escape square for my king with g3. I wasn’t thrilled that this made the game look very draw-ish, but my more creative ideas all seemed headed for disaster and the back rank weakness absolutely had to be resolved in order to make progress.
The queens were quickly traded, and thus commenced the jockeying for position between the remaining rooks and knights for each side, fighting over the two remaining A pawns. Mrkajz offered a draw partway through, which I thought was totally reasonable, but I also felt like I was still making a bit of progress, so I declined and worked my way up until the pawns were touching on A6 and A7. Here, Mrkajz presented a knight trade, which I accepted, but rather than retake his pawn with my rook and find myself stuck on the 6th row and heading toward what I figured would be a draw, I advanced my pawn with the idea that I would be forced to trade the pawns eventually, but could turn the 3v3 into a 3v2 in the meantime. We worked our way all the way up to move 57 when, as Willywyatt put it for our previous game…my brain broke.
I felt like I had the advantage and an idea that seemed very promising. It was all worked out, and was going to head for, if not victory, at least some challenging questions for mrkajz. I very confidently advanced my g-pawn and immediately realized that I had missed the first, most basic step and given up my whole advantage. Now down to equal material against an opponent too sharp to blunder checkmate on the 8th row. I offered the draw and it was accepted. Apologies to my opponent for the big waste of time after his original draw offer. I haven’t looked at the analysis yet, and am very interested to see what Stockfish thought at the key junctures, but also a little leery to see what I might have thrown away.
https://www.chess.com/game/daily/497436893