Game 9, Caro-Kann, sprcow(1419) vs. Fernandell(1342), Friday 1/12/2019

On one hand, I'm annoyed that I keep getting paired with lower-rated players. On the other hand, I don't mind winning a few games in a row to boost morale. I felt like I played fairly well today, at least when it comes to identifying some key tactical opportunities. I did fail to correctly calculate the pawn exchanges in the center early in the game, which is annoying, and I got a little low on time, but overall I felt like I had some good stretches of highly-accurate moves.

We went into the Caro-Kann, which I almost never face. I know basically nothing about the theory, so resort to my approach against any slow-seeming opening by black: push my pawns into the middle and try to protect them. It went okay, though I perhaps should have opted for an earlier c4 in light of Black's overly cautious early play.

I got a little apprehensive after the center opened up and black appeared to have a lot of pressure, but once I was able to disentangle my pieces, the central location of black's queen and the open files gave me a lot of firing opportunities to chase the queen around, build pressure, and start looking for tactics. This part of the game really reminded me of the Fischer quote, 'tactics flow from a superior position.' Once I had all my pieces pointing the right way and my opponent had wasted too much time to get their rooks into the game, it seemed likely I would find some opportunity to attack, and I did.