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Twitter chess tournament R4

Round 4, and I am paired up against an opponent I know next to nothing about. I checked his Lichess profile, and found just a few games. I saw that he had played the London system a few times, so that was my best guess as to what I could expect.

The game was a bit dry. Both players made a few mistakes and failed to fully utilize each other's mistakes. After a few positional inaccuracies from my opponent, I had a chance to play for a win, but didn't manage to find the right continuation. The game ended in a draw.

I gave the resulting position to an FM at my club, and asked his opinion about it. He said the pushing b4 was not necessarily the right plan. Rather, he suggested playing g5 and opening up the kingside. In his opinion, doubling on the g-file would be a good try for black.

My opponent arrived at a similar conclusion after having fed the position toan engine and having it play the game out. The computer closed up the queenside and went for a kingside attack. Black won after roughly 60 moves.

So even when a position seems dead drawn, there might still be some play left. Perhaps I should try harder next time.

Please see the inline annotations for more details.


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