Black vs 1910 fide

[killcrazy]

I don't think FIDE hand out provisional ratings? They required you to play too many games before rating you, but it's been a few years since I played an international tournament which is more than enough time for FIDE to screw up something that's worked perfectly well for decades. Either way, my opponent has been around 1900 +/- 50 for many years, he just made some mistakes on a night when I didn't. There's much more to a game than is generally evident from the game score, much as the hand history doesn't tell you everything in poker.

White played too aggressively all game in my opinion. He made 4 errors of note. Firstly Qa4 which does nothing for his attack and ultimately displaces his queen, a3 is better. My plan from 9...Bd7 onwards was to play tight and solid inviting him to overextend on the queenside. I expected him to be less familiar with 9...Bd7 lines because the fashionable move for the last decade or so has been Nc5 (which obviously has to be played immediately before white plays b4). The problem with not playing 9...Nc5 is, of course, that black has difficulty centralising his knight. If white hasn't seen 9...Bd7 before it's easy to reason that the move is bad because of the a6 knight problems, he probably also expects that someone playing 1...f5 doesn't want to (or is incapable of) playing a solid, quiet, positional game.

The second mistake was overlooking the strength of the g7 bishop and leaving both his knights on its diagonal in his haste to throw material into the queenside attack, he should have taken a move to play Bb2 before Nd4. After 13...Ne4, Nxe4 is the only move that isnt horrible; 14.Bxe4 f4 and white can't defend or retreat both pieces with one move, 14.Nxf5 gxf5 15.Nxe4 fxe4 16.Bxe4 looks interesting; two pawns for the knight, black's king has lost his pawn cover and white has lots of threats, but 16...d5 17.cxd5 cxd5 and the discovered attack on the queen gives black the move he needs to get his rook out of the way of the Bxd5+ fork. If white plays 18.Bxd5+ then e6 and white can probably resign. Incidentally Fritz insists that 14...fxe4 is a little better than Bxd4, because Fritz doesn't care about pawn structure.

The third mistake is, of course, Bh6. White really should be regrouping here instead of ploughing on with pointless threats that go nowhere. The exchange that follows obviously favours black, leaving him with the bishop pair and more pieces than white, though white has two rooks. Rb8 follows pretty obviously from this exchange, and white's attack has lost whatever venom it had.

The fourth mistake is Bxc6 for which I have no explanation other than, white saw something that wasn't there and failed to see all black's possible escapes. I presume he was trying to break the bishop pair by 19...Nc5 20.Qd1 and simply missed that the c6 bishop could also escape with threat (Nc5 is much more obvious). In either case, 18.b5 is preferable to the unnecessary sacrifice and achieves the same goal, 18...Nc5 19.Qd1 Nxe4 20.Qd4 Nf6. Black maintains a small advantage but has much work ahead of him.

Kc

[Boilermaker]

Originally Posted by killcrazy

I don't think FIDE hand out provisional ratings?

I'm familiar with USCF where they do provisional for the first 20 games. FIDE may not do this.

[killcrazy]

National feds have always had some kind of provisional system, but nobody is going to enter fide rated tournaments without being established as a player already unless they're some kind of wunderkind in which case their rating will always be garbage until they discover girls and stop playing.

Kc