I was away this week on work, but managed to play a few games at the hotel during the evening. My record was pretty much 50-50 as I'm fooling around with trying to get a better feel for some black systems that interested me. The games were all played with a 2-minute limit per move - enough to do some thinking, but not deep calculation (for me at this stage in my career, anyway) so it takes on a bit of an intuitive theme.
Looking around on some boards, it seems the English has a reputation for being highly positional and not very sharp. I disagree as I find it to be a very flexible system that incorporates as much of an element as you wish it to.
Anyway, here we go to the game (against a higher rated opponent at 1515):
1. c4 Nf6
2. Nc3 Nc6
3. g3 b6
4. Bg2 d5
I open up fighting for control of d5 and e4, while not committing anything too much. My opponent used a double knight opening to keep his options open, moved the b-pawn for a fianchetto should he choose to, and then tried to occupy the d5-square. Doing a quick simplified analysis shows that I have 3 attackers on that square (pawn, knight, and bishop) and my opponent has only 2 defenders (knight and queen), so I decided to take.
5. cxd5 Nb4
6. e4 e6
My opponent realised that he would lose if he fought back for that square, and so moved his knight to a potential forking square. I then thrust a pawn into the center to support the advanced d-pawn. Looking back on this now, I missed a much stronger move - Qa4, forking the unprotected knight and the queen. I'm kicking myself for that right now, but hey - that's what time pressure does.
7. Qe2 exd5
8. exd5+ Be7
I'm still mulling over this move. I left myself open to a knight fork of my king and rook, but saw an opportunity for expanding control in the center. At the time, I figured I would give it a go and sacrifice the rook while his knight becomes dimly placed afterwards and I can thrust out with the counter-attack.
9. d6 cxd6
10. Bxa8 Bf5
11. Bg2 Nc2+
12. Kd1 Nxa1
I opened a line for my bishop to spear the rook. Looking back again, I could have made the intermediate move of Qa5+, forking the knight and king, instead of immediately taking the rook. He finally brought his knight in to take my rook. Comparing positions at this point, I feel that I'm at an advantage. I have a bishop controlling the long diagonal, a queen with three open lines, and a decent pawn structure. His knight, although in my territory, isn't doing much at the moment, and he only has one bishop exerting influence in my region. My bishop is the only unprotected piece, while he has and undefended rook, bishop, knight, and two pawns, and a decimated queen-side. I noticed a pretty impressive tactical opportunity to take!
13. Qb5+ Qd7
14. Bc6 Bc2+
I was happy to see that he decided to defend his king with his queen as he was looking for counterplay with his bishop in my zone. This allowed me to explore the power of the pin!
15. Ke1 Bd3
16. Bxd7+ Nxd7
17. Qxd3 Ne5
At first I was worried that this had just led to our queens taking each other's bishops, but the power of the pin shone through. I took his queen, checking his king, which limited his moves, thus allowing me to take his bishop as well. We traded bishops and I got a queen for free. A pretty good deal if you ask me.
18. Qb5+ Nd7
19. Nf3 O-O
20. Qxd7 Nc2+
21. Kd1 Nd4
22. Qxe7 Nxf3
I missed trapping and taking his knight with Qb1. It would have been for free. I put my queen on the king hunt and developed the lazy knight. He pinned himself to allow a castling. It left his knight hanging which allowed me to scoop it up, while he made a check that he couldn't back up. I moved my king in to attack his knight. He moved it out of the way, attacking my knight. This gave me a choice to make - take his knight and let his bishop get away, or take his bishop and lose my knight. I spent nearly my whole move time limit thinking this one through and decided that since things were opening up, that his bishop was of more value and needed to be taken out.
23. Qxa7 Nd4
24. Qxb6 Nf5
25. Re1 h6
26. Qc6 Kh7
With a time limit I figured it was smarter to play practically instead of trying to get a fancy, but risky checkmate pattern going. I started chowing down on pawns and he maneuvered his knight to put a stop to it. This meant it was time to bring out my rook and get my queen into position. He made a luft for his king and was getting ready to run.
27. Re8 Nd4
28. Qd7 Rh8
29. Rxh8+ Kxh8
He tried to get his knight involved but my queen just dodged him. We exchanged rooks which increased my material advantage ratio. At this point I had a nice, simple, and safe pawn march end game that he was powerless to stop it.
30. Qxd6 Nf5
31. Qb8+ Kh7
32. b4 g5
33. b5 h5
34. b6 h4
35. g4 Ne7
36. b7 Nc6
37. Qc7 Nd4
38. b8=Q Nf3
39. Qxf7+ Kh6
40. Qh8#
All in all, I was happy with the game. There were no significant blunders and I think we both played well enough (although there was room for improvement for sure). His biggest mistake was in allowing his queen to be pinned to his king and I was able to capitalise on that. Either way though, at that point he was in a tough position to defend.
As I was saying, the English Opening offers a lot of flexibility with how you choose to play. In this game, we have some great examples of piling on attackers, pins, forks, discovered checks/attacks, and sacrifice, along with strategic positioning. Pretty exciting if you ask me!
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