Alizza Clare Marie M.

Tangliben PE 2 - SDE – [1st] AY 2020-2021 GAME 2

put my bishop in a position to capture the knight on f4 or
Alizza Tangliben the pawn on g7, and possibly the rook on h8. 21.Bb5+ Kf7
Upon analyzing after the game, I realized that I rushed
this move to check the king. I should have just captured
Brijet Albio
the knight. 22.Bc6 Rxa6 23.Bxf4 Rxc6 I made a blunder
and left my bishop unprotected because I had my eyes
This was my second game in the class tournament.
on the knight. 24.Ne5+ Ke8 25.Nxc6 Qd7 But then I
Like the first game, I wanted my strategy to be more gained some ground again by checking the king and
of a defensive one (to play defensively until I saw a capturing the rook, or so I thought. 26.Qa4 g5 27.Be3 h3
situation that I can take advantage of). But as I These 2 moves are an attempt to find vulnerable pieces
would soon find out after playing the game, my and protect my vulnerable pieces. 28.gxh3 g4 This move
strategy is not as effective when I am playing white I completely overlooked, and it was the one that led to
instead of black. 1.e4 e5 2.c3 Nc6 3.d4 d6 I wanted to my loss. I didn’t want to open my king side before this
put my pieces on the two middle squares to adhere to moment and I just let it go without being able to process
the principle of “controlling the center”. Since the the complications. 29.Qa8+ Bd8 30.Ne5 gxh3+ 31.Ng4
opponents move was knight c6 and his pawn was already Rxg4# The next moves were inevitable because my
there, I had to establish a protection for my pawn first. opponent had already trapped my king.
4.Nf3 f6 5.Bc4 Nge7 The next moves were an attempt to
free up the king side so I could castle and also to establish My main takeaway from this match is that it is not
my other pieces. 6.O-O h5 7.b4 Ng6 8.Nbd2 Be7 9.Nb3 a6 enough to just play safe and not take risks. Not
After castling, my next few moves were really just about taking risks and opportunities can lead to even
establishing other pieces because I didn’t want to engage greater risks and mistakes. Also, our mistakes and
because of my strategy in mind. 10.d5 b5 11.Bd3 Bb7 blunders are what can mainly make us lose the
12.dxc6 Bxc6 13.c4 bxc4 14.Bxc4 Bxe4 After I ran out of game.
moves that I thought made sense, I thought about what
attack I could do to gain a point advantage in the pieces.
Then I decided to invade the opponent’s territory. I had
to move my bishop to protect it because my opponent
was up for capturing it. I think she overlooked the threat
to her horse because she was planning a threat of her
own. After that exchange, I ended up capturing pieces
with 1 point advantage in total but she put my horse
under threat. 15.Bd3 f5 I took a lot of time calculating the
possible scenarios and tradeoffs. I decided on bishop d3
because if she decides to capture either my bishop or
knight, I could also capture the bishop. Alternatively, if
she captures my bishop, I could capture it with my queen
and possibly capture the knight on g6 too or the pawns
surrounding it. It was a good bargain. 16.Bb2 c5 But since
my opponent selected to move another piece, my play in
mind was interrupted. As I’m analyzing this now, this was
a mistake that cost me the game. I should’ve just
captured the bishop because it would cause me great
problems in the endgame. I did not capture the bishop
because I did not foresee its threat to the king. Also, I
made the mistake of being too defensive and not taking
moving in offense and taking risks. 17.b5 Nf4 18.Nc1 h4
These two turns were blunders and they did not do me
any good. 19.bxa6 d5 The pawn on a6 was vulnerable and
I was testing if my opponent will overlook the bishop
threat to a6 and capture my pawn with the rook but that
didn’t happen. 20.Bxe5 Rg8 I captured the pawn and also