In a KGD, my opponent managed to work up what appeared to be a strong K-side attack while I was lacking any real chances on the other side of the board. His play on the K-side was making me nervous despite the fact that the engines were saying his advantage was only minimal. I had to do something though so made an incursion into his Q-side with my Q, all the while disbelieving the engine output saying I was OK. You know how it is? Your opponent is massing his pieces against your King and all you’ve got is a lone Q harassing a couple of P’s on the other side of the board. That just can’t be good. The alarming thing was that the evaluations started out about equal but as we went along, they started drifting more and more towards White and when you see a trend like that, it’s not a good sign.
Indeed, by move 35 White was clearly calling the shots and I have no explanation for his 36th move which missed the win. Still, holding the draw required some analysis because I didn’t totally trust the engines. After all, earlier they had been reassuring me everything was OK despite my doubts.
What I’m finding in these games is what I already knew. Against strong players with good positional sense, you can’t totally rely on engine analysis alone. I got lucky…this time.
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