Game 2, French Exchange, Fritz1(1396) vs. sprcow(1412), Thursday 1/3/2019
As a French Defense player, I usually don't mind seeing the exchange French, because the people who play it at my level often do so to avoid knowing much theory in the French. From Black's perspective, it makes life comparatively easy in the opening, freeing the light square bishop and letting black equalize early.
However, because none of the people who play the Exchange variation against me know what they're doing, I'm ALSO not very good at the theory in this line. "Play Bd6, develop your pieces, and wing it" is pretty much where I get off.
Didn't work out so well today. My opponent played an early Qe2+, giving a check before either of was developed. I know this isn't great for white, but then wasted too much time trying to figure out what to do about it. I opted not to trade queens and we ended up in a SUPER SHARP line in which my opponent completely ruined my kingside. I managed to extricate myself with some tactics, but at the cost of almost all the time on my clock, and so I went into totally winning endgame position up almost two entire pieces. All I needed to do was trade down and convert.
Unfortunately, because my time was so low, I decided to trade some pieces for pawns to simplify into a position I thought was winning. I probably could still have won it, but not when I was down to seconds on the clock to my opponent's 10 minutes. He managed to make complications and we devolved into a drawn position, and then I ran out of time and loss.
All in all a very disappointing finish to a rather long game. Today's game took about 50 minutes and clocked in at 52 moves.
Looking on the brightside, though, I see that the engine actually is quite pleased with my play for the first 25 moves, actually giving me a 99.3 CAPS at that point. Like I discussed yesterday, this is kind of an arbitrary value, but I managed to thread the needle of the tactical complications of my position well. I just did a terrible job converting.
However, because none of the people who play the Exchange variation against me know what they're doing, I'm ALSO not very good at the theory in this line. "Play Bd6, develop your pieces, and wing it" is pretty much where I get off.
Didn't work out so well today. My opponent played an early Qe2+, giving a check before either of was developed. I know this isn't great for white, but then wasted too much time trying to figure out what to do about it. I opted not to trade queens and we ended up in a SUPER SHARP line in which my opponent completely ruined my kingside. I managed to extricate myself with some tactics, but at the cost of almost all the time on my clock, and so I went into totally winning endgame position up almost two entire pieces. All I needed to do was trade down and convert.
Unfortunately, because my time was so low, I decided to trade some pieces for pawns to simplify into a position I thought was winning. I probably could still have won it, but not when I was down to seconds on the clock to my opponent's 10 minutes. He managed to make complications and we devolved into a drawn position, and then I ran out of time and loss.
All in all a very disappointing finish to a rather long game. Today's game took about 50 minutes and clocked in at 52 moves.
Looking on the brightside, though, I see that the engine actually is quite pleased with my play for the first 25 moves, actually giving me a 99.3 CAPS at that point. Like I discussed yesterday, this is kind of an arbitrary value, but I managed to thread the needle of the tactical complications of my position well. I just did a terrible job converting.
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