Heidenfeld in trouble

The Heidenfeld look like they need a miracle on a par with last season’s O’Hanlon escape after a 7-1 thrashing against 2011/12 Armstrong champions Rathmines A last night.

Resuming 1-0 down after Ross’ defeat on board 1, the match started strangely. I tried a short-cut, got lost in a maze of one-way streets, no right turns and heavy traffic and took 15 minutes to do a large and pointless loop about a quarter of a mile from the venue, debutant Brendan Cooney was in a room with the BA due to playing a blind player, Michael’s opponent was adamant Michael was there when he clearly wasn’t while Mariusz’s opponent was in Benildus wondering where the rest of us were! All told, four of us – myself, Michael, sub Mihailo and Mariusz’s opponent – were down 15 minutes on the clock before the first move. Annoyingly, the game also marked Rathmines’ first full team of the season, with a 1700 on board 8 instead of the 1300 for the rest of their games.

Still, the match started quite well, with Ciarán – a three-time Killane winner – winning against Jack Killane in little more than an hour. It’s a game well worth sharing!

Ciarán Ruane (1552) v Jack Killane (1789), Heidenfeld Trophy, 09/12/13

Annotation by Ciarán Ruane

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 ed 4. NxP Bc5 5. Be3 Bb6 6. Nb5
This is a crazy, but fun, sideline. 6. c3 Nge7 7. Bc4 or 7. g3 is the sane way to play with a fairly level position.

BxB 7. PxB Qh4+ 8. g3 Qd8
8…Qxe4 9. Nxc7+ Kd8 10. Nxa8 Qxh1 11. Qd6 is the other way for Black to play; with a fun position.

9. Qg4 Nf6?? (D)
The first out of book move, and it turns out to be a bad one. 9…g6 is the most common move here (though this is a pretty uncommon position). After 10.Qf4 d6 11.Bc4 White’s better development is probably enough to balance the horrible pawns on the e-file.

10. Nxc7+!
I spent over half an hour on this move. My first idea was 10.Qxg7 Rg8 11.Nxc7+ with the idea that 11…Qxc7 leaves the knight on f6 undefended, but 11…Ke7 leaves the knight and queen hanging with no more tricks available. So I tried reversing the moves.

Even after eliminating 10…Kf8 and 10…Ke7 (though Ke7 is the computer’s favourite, it just leaves White a pawn up with a better position so Qxc7 is a much better practical try), there’s still a lot to calculate after Qxc7.

10. … QxN 11. Qxg7 Ke7
11…Rg8 12.Qxf6 leaves White a comfortable two pawns up so again giving the rook is the only reasonable way to play.

12. QxR
White has lots of tricky moves here, all of which should have been calculated before playing 10.Nxc7+. 12…Qe5 and 12…Qa5+ look dangerous with the king stuck in the middle of the board for a while and the b2-pawn potentially tender but 13.Nc3 seems OK after both. 12…Nxe4 13.Qxh7 Qa5+ 14.c3 also seems to hold onto the material.

12. … Qb6
Threatening the b2 and e3 pawns. Having calculated almost every queen move but this one, I was a little worried here!

KB comment – At this stage, Jack commented to me that – bar the trifling issue of being down an exchange and two pawns, he was quite happy with his position. He only gets to make two more moves!

13. Nc3
The only move to keep a decent advantage amusingly defends neither attacked pawn.

13. … QxP+
13…Qxb2 is met by 14.Nd5+ with everything getting swapped off on f6 because of the pin on the diagonal.

14. Be2 d5?? (D)
After 14…Nb4 I was going to play 15.Kd1 with 16.Rf1 to follow but the computer says 15.Rf1 straight away is crushing. The threats on the f6-knight and of the fork on d5 mean that after 15…Nxc2+ 16.Kd1 there’s no time to take the rook.

This loses instantly – see if you can spot how before scrolling on!

15. QxN+! 1-0
15. … KxQ 16. NxP+ and 17. NxQ and white is a rook and two pawns up. Although Fritz, ever the perfectionist, notes 15. Rf1 is actually stronger! After 15. … Qg5, the same tactic follows, with white’s pieces just better placed.

Things were going ok elsewhere; both Ronan and myself looked lost very early on, but had struggled back to something approaching equality, Michael was a pawn up, Mihailo’s opponent had gotten nowhere from an early Qh5, possibly trying to intimidate his sub-1000 opponent (Mihailo’s rating for the leagues is 999).

Then things started to untangle. Ronan, while still cramped, had swapped off queens and things looked much rosier – until he dropped an exchange, and then another. Mihailo dropped a pawn, and then another; both resigned in short succession. Brendan – still a bit rusty after 13 years without a competitive game – got squeezed out of it, while Mariusz was a pawn down, missed a chance of going into a drawn opposite-coloured bishop ending and lost as well. 5-1, but at least we were winning the last two! That didn’t last long, though at least my 12th defeat in a row saw me play reasonably well except for the last move…

Dave Goggins (1767) v Kevin Burke (1620); Heidenfeld Trophy; 09/12/13
As a side note, I last played Dave in 1997, in my third game for the club, which just happened to be for the Armstrong! He had exactly 800 points on me then, and won. For a while, comparing the two games would lead you to think I’d gone backwards since then…

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. e5 Nd7 5. Bd3 c5 6. c3 Nc6 7. Ne2
More common than 7. Nf3, though strangely, I’ve played against the latter line more often, and tend to play it myself as well. The knight is heading for f4, where it’ll put pressure on e6. I think there’s a line here somewhere involving a g5 push for black, but I couldn’t remember where it came in, and the only time I played it, it turned out to be very much the wrong time for it and I got hammered by a 1900, so I decided to ignore it and play what turns out to be the main line anyway.

7. … cd 8. cd f6 9. Nf4!?
Objectively, this isn’t the best, but chess isn’t always objective. Black can get away with 9. … Nxd4 here with, according to one book, “bewildering complications with unclear results” where black gives up an exchange to get a big centre. I was wary of grabbing pawns after doing so in the last game and losing…and instead went off into lines with bewildering complications with unclear results where black gives up an exchange to get a big centre. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, if there was one thing life has taught me it was that there are times when you don’t grab pawns in the French and other times when you do. It has yet to teach me to distinguish between the two types of occasion.

9. … Nb6?
I had looked at 9. … Qe7 10. Qh5+ Qf7 11. Bg6 PxB 12. QxR fe 13. Nd3 ed, but then I saw a ghost – 9. … Qe7 10. Ng6 PxN 11. BxP+ and I missed that the king now has d8 as an escape square; the only other move is 11. … Qf7, losing the queen. Still, I just didn’t feel up to an early king walk! But this is just bad for black. 9. … Qe7 is grand, typically.

10. Nf3?
10. Qh5+ gives white a decent advantage. Now I get to untangle safely.

10. … Bb4+ 11. Bd2 BxB+ 12. QxB fe 13. de 0-0 14. 0-0 Qe7
With the threat of 15. … Qb4, winning material – the knight and queen are hanging, and if white tries 16. QxQ NxQ, the bishop and knight are now hanging.

15. a3 Be7 16. Nh3? (D)

16. … RxN
This doesn’t really get an exclamation mark; it’s a fairly standard sac in many lines of the French, and white shouldn’t have allowed it. That I can follow up with NxP with tempo means the move plays itself. I had started to look at some lines arising, but then realised I had 44 minutes left what with being late and working out a way out of (in to?) trouble earlier, so I just went for it.

17. PxR NxP 18. Be2 Rf8 19. Qg5 Qd6?!
Fritz gives out here, demanding 19. … QxQ 20. NxQ h6 21. Nh3 NxP+. I figured swapping off queens would just blunt my attack. I think this has to be on my list for Santa!

20. Kh1 Ng6
I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t just take on f3.

21. Qg3 e5 22. Rg1 Nc8
Coming over to join the attack, though Fritz slightly prefers another idea I’d been looking at – 22. … BxN 23. QxB Nf4 24. Qf1. Again, I wanted more material on the board for the attack.

23. Rad1 Ne7 24. Bd3 Nf5 25. Qg5 Nh4 26. BxN
Another concession; my light-squared bishop is now unopposed, and the light-square diagonal to the king is weak, and the passed pawn’s promotion square is light…

26. … NxB 27. Rg3 d4
Opening up the route to the king

28. Rdg1 Bc6??
Fritz has given me +1 or so ever since the exchange sac. Now that’s all gone. I had looked at 28. … Rf5, when 29. Qg4 loses to … Rxf3! 30. QxR Bc6. The only other options are 29. Qd2 – which suits me grand – or, of course, Qd8+, which gets me nowhere. Maybe I should have tried 28. … Be6, when that plan is still on and when, in hindsight, the route to my king is less draughty. Fritz suggests 28. … Qc6, giving that as +2 for me compared with level for the text. Such thin margins in chess at times! My opponent misses the reply 29. Qh5, however, meaning I’m still better.

29. Qg4? d3
Passed pawns must be pushed! When an opponent is defending, change the direction of the attack! For all the cliches, this plan is still wrong. Maybe I should ask Santy for this as well…

30. Rd1 d2? 31. Qc4+
Not a nice move to face with 5 minutes left.

31. … Kh8 32. Ng5 Qd7
The correct defence.

33. Qc2 Rd8
Again, the correct defence…

34. Rh3? (D)

Qd5?? 35. QxN 1-0
If instead 34. … Qd3, black has a great position. I thought I was just lost after Rh3, and played Qd5 in desperation, hoping for some manner of attack on f3 while still covering the knight fork on f7, but in time trouble (90 seconds when I resigned), I overlooked QxN, when the rook and knight still protect f3, and that the fork isn’t an issue while white’s queen is hanging.

There was still time – or not – for Michael to lose; his flag falling when still a pawn up. 7-1 overall; a bigger defeat than we suffered in the entire of last season.

It’s now probably a three-way battle for the drop. Bray travel to Kilkenny this weekend, which concludes round 5. They’re playing the same set of fixtures as us one round behind us, so we can compare our results – we’re 1½ points ahead from the three games in common so far (each other, Lucan and Elm Mount). So we need Bray to lose, Naomh Barróg – who are holding in admirably considering their ratings! – to start drifting back a bit, and then we may be safe. Anything else, and…