En/na Mark Hathaway ha escrit:
Antonio Torrecillas wrote:

En/na Mark Hathaway ha escrit:

[Event "Land of the Sky Open"]
[Site "Asheville NC USA"]
[Date "2003.01.31"]
[Round "1"]
[White "FM 2300"]
[Black "Hathaway"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A43"]
[PlyCount "132"]
[EventDate "2003.??.??"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 c5 3. d5 d6 4. Nc3 g6 5. e4 Bg7 6. Bb5+ Bd7 7. a4 O-O
8. h3 Na6 9. O-O Nc7 10. Bc4 a6 11. e5 dxe5 12. Nxe5 b5
13. axb5 Bxb5 14. Bxb5 Nxb5 15. Nc6 Nxc3
16. bxc3 Qd6 17. Qf3 Rfe8 18. Rd1 e5

{I prefer white: has better pieces and an strong passed pawn in d5.}

He does have open lines, but Black has a solid structure
and passed Pa6 and potential for his king-side to 'unwind'
to become active. At least that's what I thought at the time.

19. c4 Nd7 20. Rb1 e4 21. Bf4 $6
{Enter in bad tactics.} ({I prefer:} 21. Qf4 $1 $14 {with initiative
for white.})

21. Qf4 might be met by ...Nd7-e5, threatening ...Nxc4 or ...Nxc6.
In any event it does appear to be better than Bf4.

I think that here is the moment to show why I think white is better:
After 21.Qf4 Ne5 22.Rb7! Qf8 23.Bb2 Nxc6 24.Bxg7 Qxg7 25.dxc6 white
wants to play Rdd7 and his pawn in c6 is dangereous. Black has a
difficult defensive task here.

(...)
Well, at least you didn't find any terribly overwhelming
tactics either of us could've played; just a few stronger
move-choices (& variations). But, that's to be expected
as we're mere humans playing with a running clock.

Again, your notes and general impressions are pretty much
in line with what I thought was going on during the game.
Probably Qf4 rather than Bf4 would've kept it complicated
for 100 years. As it was Bf4 was just so natural and
obvious, he couldn't imagine it would lead to difficulties.
Chess is amazing that way sometimes.

The problem of 21.Bf4 is that white calculate very few moves because
only is needed a few movew depth to see the problems.

And about overwhelming tactics, ... in all our games (at least in my
games and my friend's) there are a lot of tactical oppotunities missed.
It's needed to be an strong GM or a last version of an engine to see all
the "simple" tactics and to see all "difficult" tactics are far from
human possibilities in OTB chess.