2019 State Championship Match

On April 27, 2019, High Technology High School had a heavily outrated team at the chess state championships. Our team of 5 students had an average rating of about 1400, in comparison to the 1700 rating of the favorite team, Bergen County Academies. Although I prepared a lot with the HTHS team, reviewing games, practicing tactics, and preparing openings, the team knew it would take a miracle to defeat Bergen. I barely ate any of my lunch that day because I was so nervous for the match, and soon realized that I would be facing Daniel, a 1900 rated player. My rating was about 1650, and I had just lost an embarrasing defeat to a 1380, so I thought I had basically no chance of winning the game.

However, I tried to do what I could to prepare myself and win the game. Before the match, I watched Daniel finish a crazy match against another opponent; he won with a very complicated attacking position from the Sicilian Defense, and played a lot of tactics to win the game. Because of this, I decided that I did not want to face the sharp lines of the Sicilian. Instead of playing 1. e4, I would play 1. Nf3 and not enter an attacking game.

NJ State Champions R3: Bergen-HTHS, Board #2

The game starts off a little odd. Daniel’s 1 .. c5 shows that he wanted to play the Sicilian (which transposes after 2.e4), although he does not seem to know how to play this opening. For example, he plays 5 .. Nbd7 but then he continues with 6 .. a6, which just wastes time. Here, although my odd choice of 8. Ne5 is not the best move, it offers a trade of queens, which I am almost certain that he will not accept. Daniel was way too aggressive to want to trade queens so early. If he had played 8. Bxd1, I would play 9. Nxd7, taking his queen. Then, the game would get really weird. However, Daniel does not trade queens, which really gives me an advantage in the position.

Here, Daniel’s queen is on c8 and his pieces are weak, while my bishop is very strong on the fianchetto. I have a clear advantage and initiative (as my king is also castled). After a couple of moves, I took control of the game, and now Daniel will have to respond to my threats. Will this opening advantage be enough for me to beat a 1900? Probably not. But what happens in the next few moves is quite surprising.

Daniel, my opponent, did not take my chess game seriously. He had a perfect record so far, and the fact that this was a quiet game (without much attacking) made the game less interesting to him. He kept leaving the board very often and rushed his moves, trying to just stay in the game and wait for me to mess up. On his 14th move, he quickly rushed to play 14 .. e6 to finish his development and castle. However, it wasn’t until after he touched his e pawn that he realized how bad of a move it was (see variation). Forced to move the e pawn, Daniel played 14 .. e5, which just dropped a pawn as opposed to a full piece. This move gave me enough of an advantage to just grind out to an endgame and win. Still, I was asking myself, is this enough of an advantage for me to win the game? I thought so, because I am very materialistic. However, the rest of the game was still a tough challenge.

I was happy to trade off the fianchettoed bishop protecting Daniel’s king. This defensive bishop is really important, and it is usually good to try to trade it off. Now, the dark squares in front of Daniel’s king are weak. Instead of trying to attack these, however, I traded queens, which would significantly reduce my opponent’s counterplay. Without counterplay, Daniel would have a hard time making a comeback in the game. At this same time, I saw that my teammates were not doing well at all against Bergen. Our fifth board player lost very quickly to a 1300, the only sub-1800 player on Bergen’s team. The game on the third board was looking hopeless, too. Since each team only needs 3 wins of 5 to win the entire match, the odds of us winning were diminishing. Even though I thought I might win my game, I assumed that HTHS would lose to Bergen.

My first objective in this rook + knight endgame was to secure my pawn structure. I did not want my rook to be pinned to the defense of any of my pawns. On my queenside, my b and c pawns are well protected. In addition, my a pawn is hard to reach (as the black knight can’t easily get to c3 and the rook can’t get around easily). To seal the deal, my d pawn, although it’s backwards, is hard to target because I control the e file and my knight has a strong outpost on d5. Meanwhile, Daniel’s a and c pawns are weak, and I can (and will) easily target them. The game is far from over, though. My king is starting to join the fight, and there is about to be a clash in the center of the board.

Meanwhile, the third board on my team lost, and the score of the match is 2-0 Bergen. Bergen just needed one draw to tie the match or one win to win the match. The fourth board game looked about equal after my friend threw his advantage in the game, and the first board game looked equal, too. My game (at second board) looked promising, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to change the outcome of the match.

I have given up my pawn advantage (temporarily), but my pieces are a lot more active. My rook and knight control the important e file, and on the queenside, my c and d pawns are basically connected passed pawns. Meanwhile, it will be easy to pick off Daniel’s a and b pawns if I ever want to. Stockfish evaluates this at +1.6 despite the material equality, which means I should win. However, since Daniel is rated so high, I was worried that I would overlook a tactic and throw my advantage. (In fact, there was an opportunity to enter the drawing range with an interesting tactic on move 24 and again on move 43 - see the analysis at the end.)

Look at those monster passed pawns on c5 and d5! My pieces have become very active in comparison to Daniel’s passive rook and knight. My knight is passive, which is a mistake on my part, although at least it means it is hard for Daniel to make counterplay on the kingside. Even though the material is still equal, and most rook endgames are drawish, Stockfish evaluates this at +5.4, a definite win for me.

Around the same time, my friend at fourth board won his game (an upset: a 1300 beat an 1800!) and my friend at first board won his game (also an upset: a 1750 beating a 2000). The match score was tied at 2-2, and my game was the deciding game. I thought that I would be able to pull off a win, but there was a lot of pressure (including some minor time pressure), so I wasn’t very confident.

Daniel finally messes up. The king and rook are attacked, so he has to give up the rook to save the king. Then, my c pawn would promote with little resistance. After 5 more moves, Daniel resigned to me. In my opinion, I won this game for two reasons. First, Daniel threw a pawn early on and played passively, and I took the initiative to control the game. This is the most obvious reason. The second reason is harder to notice. Before the game, I noted that my opponent was very aggressive, so even before the game started, I changed my opening to play a more positional game, something I assumed he wasn’t as good at. Even though Daniel tried to transpose into the agressive Sicilian, I declined it for a more positional game, something I am better at. I think that if I had played against the Sicilian, I would be much less likely to win - or even draw - the match.

In the end, HTHS earned a decisive 3-2 victory against Bergen, securing first place in the state championships. Although there was another round left, HTHS had a one win advantage over all of the other teams in the competition. In the end, we won our last match, and against all odds, won the championships.