Montreal Round 1

August 25, 2008 • General

Well, hmm, where to start? I arrived in Montreal the afternoon before yesterday on a surprisingly short flight from New York (1 1/2 hours). Overall the first day was nice as I am staying with the Charbonneau’s, his great sisters and mum who I have not seen in years. So I had a pretty good day to start, but that was before the tournament began. Yesterday, I was paired with Black against fellow American Grandmaster and current US Champion Yury Shulman. Although I was feeling good for most of the day, I proceeded to play the game like a total beginner. It started when I simply forgot a move order in the opening by playing 9…0-0? instead of 9…Nfd7 which was correct. Unfortunately for me, Yury found the right idea by playing 10.Nd2 Nfd7 11.Nd3! The point being that unlike the main variation with 9…Nfd7 10.Nd3 dxc4 where I am up a pawn, here the knight on d2 protects c4. However, despite my horrible mistake, I proceeded to find some play with 10…b5 11.c5 e5!?. Later on, I got a slightly worse position and was worse until Shulman decided to become overly aggressive (after declining a draw offer) by playing 26.g4?! following it up with 27.Bh3 which was even worse. After this I obtained a completely winning position only to overlook that in the final set of moves with 33…Qe6 followed by 34…Rd2 and 35…g3, that it leads to absolutely nothing as in the final position Qh2 Kf1 Qf2?? Bxf2 seems to win a free queen. Alas, not a very inspiring game for either of us, but a fair result. Today I will play GM Akobian, so hopefully I can play better and have a good result.
Until next time!

Hikaru