George Trundle Memorial Round 4

George Trundle Memorial Round 4

Today started quite nicely. IM Vishal Sareen and his wife Arty joined me on a walk up to Mt Eden to check out the view. Although it had rained earlier, by late morning it was sunny. 

As you can see below, a few minutes after the above picture was taken, Auckland showed us it's volatile temperament. Luckily the sheet of ice cold rain passed as quickly as it appeared.

The last two games I lost because I attacked before completing my development and I was very aware of this tendency before my game today, yet I repeated the error. I even spent a bit of time on move 7 contemplating Bg4 just to avoid repeating this error. No, I thought, closed position, I'll get around to it. Then, when Ben played 8.Ne2 on the very next move, I, of course, couldn't restrain myself.

In itself, my response was not too bad, but then I needed to follow up with 13...e3 14.fe3 Be3 15.Kh1 Nc5 with equality. 13...Re8 instead just got me into trouble because I couldn't open the f file anymore due to the weakness on f7. I thought for about 40 minutes and found a way not to lose immediately and held a draw somehow, although in the final position white was still a bit better if he doesn't repeat. Qd2 instead of Ne3 is possible.

Oh well, at least I avoided queenside castling.  Notice that the idiot on c8 is still there in the final position.

Round 4

[Event "George Trundle Memorial"]
[Site "Auckland"]
[Date "2018.07.10"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Hague, Ben"]
[Black "Wohl, Aleksandar"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2356"]
[BlackElo "2335"]
[ECO "C26r"]
[EventDate "2018.07.07"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.d3 c6 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Bg5 d6 7.O-O Nbd7 8.
Ne2 h6 9.Bh4 d5 10.exd5 cxd5 11.Bb3 e4 12.dxe4 dxe4 13.Nd2 Re8 14.Nc3
Qc7 15.Bg3 Qc6 16.Ba4 Qb6 17.Nc4 Qe6 18.Nd6 Bxd6 19.Bxd6 a6 20.Re1
Qf5 21.Bb3 Nc5 22.Bxc5 Qxc5 23.Nd5 Ng4 24.Ne3 Nf6 25.Nd5 Ng4 26.Ne3
Nf6 1/2-1/2

Tomorrow I'm playing the top seed, IM Gary Lane, with white. My goal will be to develop all my pieces.