George Trundle Masters 2019 Round 5

Charcoal Bay

Today Bruce took me to this lovely spot for a swim. It is only a few minutes drive and a few minutes walk through a lovely park from his place.

We only shared the place with a handful of other people and two dogs. One of the dogs didn't want to go into the water until her owner dived under. Then she jumped in and swam vigorously in her direction, presumably because she thought her help was needed. Lab's are the most faithful and wonderful dogs.

Tread carefully though as there are plenty of oyster shells in the shallows. they can cause nasty gashes if you don't tread lightly.

Round 5

I also did some prep today as I've noticed that young Brandon is a sharp theoretical player that knows his systems well. I don't think highly of Bc4 against modern systems, so that was my choice for today. He stayed faithful to it, I switched to a hippo and equalised quite easily. 

He offered a draw on move 22, but I preferred my position already at that stage, and anyway, felt like playing chess today. Of course my next move, 23...Qc5 was a major blunder which fortunately he didn't take advantage of. I had noticed 24.hg6 hg6 25. Nf5 but thought it didn't work. My intuition was yelling at me but did I listen? The point is that after gf5 26.Nf5 Kf7 27.Rd8 Rd8 28. Qh6 Qf8 29.Qh7 Ng7 white has Bd1! We both missed this in the game and the postmortem. Instead, the long-planned 23...Nf4 is safe and keeps a small edge.

After this double-blind neither player made any huge mistakes, pieces were swapped and a draw was agreed at my suggestion.  

[Event "George Trundle Masters 2019"]
[Site "Auckland Chess Centre"]
[Date "2019.01.08"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Clarke, Brandon"]
[Black "Wohl, Aleksandar"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2400"]
[BlackElo "2332"]
[ECO "B06k"]
[EventDate "2019.01.04"]

1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nf3 d6 4.Bc4 a6 5.O-O b5 6.Bb3 e6 7.Re1 Nd7 8.Nbd2
Ne7 9.Nf1 Bb7 10.Ng3 c5 11.c3 O-O 12.Be3 c4 13.Bc2 e5 14.dxe5 dxe5
15.Qd6 Nc8 16.Qd2 Qc7 17.Bh6 f6 18.h4 Nc5 19.Rad1 Nb6 20.Bxg7 Kxg7
21.h5 Rad8 22.Qe3 Ne6 23.Nh4 Qc5 24.Qf3 Ng5 25.Qe2 Bc8 26.Nf1 Na8 27.
Ne3 Nc7 28.g3 Qc6 29.Rxd8 Rxd8 30.Rd1 Rxd1+ 31.Qxd1 Nf7 32.Nd5 Qd6
33.Nxc7 Qxc7 34.Ng2 Qd6 1/2-1/2

Tomorrow I play Vasily Papin, the top seed so will need to bring my A game. Today was an exciting round so if you want to see some of the other games, click the link below. (round 5)

https://www.newzealandchess.co.nz/tournaments/ch/2019/wwwGeorgeTrundleMasters2019/games.html

Toodles 😃