That may not sound too terrifying, but 1625 was his rating at the start of the tournament - his December elo, which is not in effect as the tournament began on November 30, is 1740.
On top of that, he had gained more than 160 elo from the first eight rounds of the tournament, so his live rating by the time he met me was over 1900.
Fortunately, I knew all this before the game began, so there was no chance of me taking him too lightly.
Miguel Ruiz Buenida (1625) - Spanton (1940)
French Winawer Exchange
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.exd5 exd5 5.Bd3 Nc6 6.Ne2 Bg4!?
Alekhine played this as long ago as 1911. But in 1927, in the first game of his world championship match against Capablanca, he preferred 6...Nge7, which is overwhelmingly more popular today.
7.f3 Bh5 8.0-0 Nge7 9.a3 Ba5 10.Re1
My main analysis engines Stockfish9 and Komodo9 prefer 10.Na4.
10...0-0 11.Be3
This seems to be a new move, but is Stockfish9's choice.
11...Qd7 12.Ng3
On 12.Nf4 Bg6 13.Nxg6 I was planning 13...fxg6!?
12...Bg6 13.Re2 Rfe8 14.Bxg6 Nxg6
I felt ...fxg6 was less appropriate here as I had hopes of getting the knight to the f4 square, but it was certainly playable.
15.Qd3
Not just developing the queen, but preventing the sequence 15...Bxc3 16.bxc3 Na5 and 17...Nc4.
15...Re6 16.Rae1 Rae8
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| So far, fairly humdrum - but RB now came up with the type of move that juniors are used to exploiting rather than committing |
Black has won a pawn for free and is clearly much better, but RB now played a highly imaginative, but extremely bad, move that I had not even remotely considered.
18.Nxd5??
I recovered from this surprise sufficiently to find one of several refutations, namely:
18...Nxe2+ 19.Rxe2 Bb6+ 0-1 (34 moves)
My reward for this: 2.8 elo.
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