So after my game was done on Thursday I wanted to play some blitz with Garingo and he started talking about how he was bored with the club and he wanted to play matches instead of tournaments. I'm pretty much in the same boat, as shown by the effortless games I have posted so far from this tournament. I've spent only 20 minutes on both games so far this tournament and I don't even get any pleasure out of finishing the game, I get lazy. Anyways so we decide to play a match because I'm pretty sure I can beat him. Once you neutralize his tactics, he goes wrong, this is easily done through good opening preparation, and a match is the best place to show off good opening preparation. So I say I want white first because I haven't had white against him in a longer game and we decide on the time controls and we go straight into a dragon. We spent very little time on our first 13 moves, and then started making mutual mistakes. I built up a very large advantage saw a very promising continuation but rejected it for the safer continuation and the blundered a few moves later squandering my advantage. I will not post any notes at this time for obvious reasons, but I will post my analysis after the match is complete.



I had fallen behind two pawns to expose the black king, but I had not been able to find a tangible solution and indeed there is none as long as Garingo does not get too excited. This seems to be his fatal flaw, he gets too wrapped up in his own attack. Until he played b3 he had not seen a glimpse of mate the whole game, as soon as I allowed him to take on c2, which I could have easily prevented with Rg2 instead of Rgg1, he overlooked Rxh7 and started his mating attack. I had not lost hope as I knew that his win was a very difficult technical endgame away and my win was always only one big mistake away. It is interesting to note that Fritz only awards Black four-tenths of a pawn after the move Rgg1 instead of Rg2, agreeing that the pawn sacrifice is not completely without compensation. The problem with Rg2 is that after the Queen captures on f5, a Queen trade is forced because of the weakness of the f1 square. But with the rook on g1, the f1 square is not weak, so after the Queen takes on f5 i can play Qg2 threatening Qg8 and forcing Rc8 and then Qb7 threatening the a6 pawn and retaining the Queen and some initiative.

He claims that he won the game, it is true that at the end he was winning and he just blundered. But I was winning by a larger margin earlier in the game and I blundered, so really we both made mistakes. I got ahead early and failed to capitalize, but I was hardly outplayed. Then in desperation I started throwing some complications in the mix and he slipped. Same as I did against Parreira, same as Pearson did against Garingo himself. Chess is a game of mistakes. I hope to make Garingo's serious mistakes a theme of this match and minimize the damage of my own.