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Twitter chess tournament R5

In this round, I was paired up against a quite strong player, so I didn't have high expectations. I had even forgot about the game until about two hours before, and had very little time to prepare. Between feeding the children and getting them to bed, I took a brief look at a few of my opponent's games.

I found that he liked to play the French, so 1. e4 was out the window. Against 1. d4, he seems to like the English defense - an opening against which I have some experience. I refreshed my memory about the opening, and especially the variation in which black keeps his knight on g8 and plays Be7-f6. And what do you know? My opponent played this very line.

The first 9 moves were pure preparation from my side. After that, I was on my own. The game was quite even up to the point where I decided to push my e-pawn and realized that I had missed one of my opponent's resources, and he won the pawn by removing a defender. However, it cost him the bishop pair, so it wasn't all bad.

I played a speculative attack on the queen side, and managed to sideline his bishop and get a position in which I could regain the pawn. However, instead of doing this, I sacrificed an exchange for a strong pair of bishops and good coordination. After a few careless moves from my opponent, I managed to find a winning combination and end the game in my favor.

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