Introduction

This game is a correspondence game, I was inspired by the games of the late Bent Larsen from his youth, where he occasionally employed this opening, I thought it would be interesting to try it out, it did not really follow the games Larsen played, but it was a nice game nonetheless.

1.c4 e5 2.d3 Nf6 3.Nf3 Bc5 4.e3 O-O 5.Be2 d6 6.O-O Bg4 7.a3 a5 8.h3 Bh5 9.b3 Nc6 10.Bb2 Ne7?!

This move is not such a great idea allowing white to make a central expansion is not a great idea, up to this point black had played rather well.



11.d4 exd4



[11...e4 12.Nfd2 Bxe2 13.Qxe2 Bb6

But I am not so sure that black can get any advantage here either, anyway it would require white to be in a charitable mood and help black.]



12.exd4 Bb6 13.Nbd2 Bg6 14.Nh4 Nd7 15.Nxg6 fxg6

Strategically a disaster!.
This does not look very promising, perhaps black had hopes of playing c7-c5 and opening up his bishop on b6, so that his pieces could attack f2, but c7-c5 will be met with d4-d5!



16.Nf3 Nf5 17.Qc2 Nf6




Manuvering his knights to blockade the file he just opened seems like a bad strategical decision, there is a lot of arguments for hxg6.



18.Rad1 c5 19.d5 Qd7 20.Rfe1 Rae8 21.Bf1 Re7 22.Rxe7 Qxe7 23.Re1 Qd7 24.Ng5




This should secure white a sustainable advantage the knight on e6 is really tearing the black positions apart, again this would not be possible with a pawn on f7.



24...Nd4 25.Bxd4 cxd4 26.Bd3 Re8 27.Ne6 Bd8 28.g4




g4 is expanding, my plans for attack the pawn on d4 and playing the bishop to g4 are all dependent on him playing b7-b6 and blockading any chance he has of using that bishop on the a7-g1 diagonal.



28...b6



So he blockades all his counterplay with this move, how nice of him.



29.a4



No reason to give him b6-b5 easily later.



29...Kf7 30.Qb2




I can take the d4 pawn for free



30...Bc7 31.Qxd4 Re7 32.Qf4




This is a devious move, technically Re7 is a mistake since he has to lose the knight now.



32...Kg8 33.g5 Rf7 34.gxf6 Rxf6 35.Qe3 Bb8 36.Be2




This was preparing Bg4! I did not consider Ba7+b5, but it turns out that it is not a great concern, also he did play it in the wrong order in the game.



36...b5 37.axb5




Black resigned.

Lessons from the game

10.- Ne7? Is not such a good move white already gets some advantage here, allowing white to advance in the center is rarely a good idea, so removing an essential defender from the center is not so great, there has to be significant gains elsewhere for this to be worth it.

15.- fxg6?? In this game it was a disaster as his potential plan of opening his bishop on the queens side was never really realistic, however sometimes this idea can be very powerful, but that is on a case-by-case basis.

18.- c5 This is in line with his 15th move, but it was a disastrous plan, but this move by itself is also a little suspect, that bishop will have a hard time getting back into the game, so in fact he is playing for a long time with a piece less effectively.

28.- b6 Blockading the last bit of his counterplay, thus making his position entirely passive, if his position then was more solid this might work for a draw, but he has a lot of big weaknesses, so this does not work.

Now I have only writing critiqued his moves, no doubt I did not make perfect moves throughout the game, however I have a harder time finding flaws in my part of the game, especially when my moves seems to be so much to the point, possibly there are some small inaccuracies, that would be natural, but I think I would need an engine to find them.