I had a very fun game against Gert. With White, I took over the initiative, looking to take advantage of a slightly passive setup. To do so I had to sacrifice a pawn, which turned out really great as I had a very promising position. Some relatively deep analysis with Houdini sort of confirms this, as I could not yet find a way out for Black after f5...
With a long term initiative, I decided to play a little bit cautious and tried to develop and deploy my pieces before going for the throat, but in the process, Gert found an absolutely brilliant defensive idea Nf6-g4-h6-f7, defending all the dark squares around a Stonewall of pawns: c6, d5, e6, f5. The defensive idea Kh8, Nh6-f7 in particular had completely escaped my consideration. Excellent job Gert!
After this defense, I decided to give another pawn (which I though should not be taken, and Houdini confirms it). Gert took it and gave up the dark squared bishop in the process. Alas, even though I did try to exploit the weakness of the dark squares and even though I still had some good chances to gain an edge, some more inaccuracies on my side made the position turn on me. Gert stabilized, opened the center and capitalized on my blunders...
I will post the game moves soon.
During the game I felt like I had too little time. Hopefully that will change on Saturday.
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