Be Stubborn!

When you know you’re in a losing position, an important thing to remember is that the game is not over until you think it’s over. You may be down a pawn or even the exchange, but if you try to win (or draw) and play agressively, you are more likely to make a comeback.

US League 2019 R1: NJ-NM, Board #15 Game 1

This position is outright winning for black, and not very fun to play as white. White is down a bishop and a couple of pawns, and to make matters worse, black’s pieces are all aimed at the king (black can activate his bishop with Bxe5! dxe5 d4+). However, if white wants even a small chance at winning, he must work to make the situation more agressive and complex, hoping for black to make a mistake.

The first thing I did is (try to) make my pieces worth more than my opponent’s. I first played 27. Bf2 to keep the black rook away from the action. Although this meant the rook had free roam at my pawns, I had to focus on initiative more than material, and this was the right thing to do since I had already lost the material game. Next, I made my rook active on its post on f6, and took away black’s control over the critical g-file. If I ever wanted to threaten his king, I had to take this file away from black.

Here comes black’s first blunder. Now that I have traded off black’s rook that controlled the g file, the file was neutral. Here, my bishop indirectly attacked the queen through the f6 rook. (Moving the f6 rook to give check would expose the black queen to the bishop, a discovered attack.) Black needed to move the queen to g7 to prevent me from taking control with Qg3+, as shown in the next moves.

33. Rxf5 is my first (and only) mate threat. Note that the black king is now completey trapped, and the bishop can go to f6 to give checkmate. The point of this rook move is to simply open up the square for the bishop. Although the move 33 .. Bd8 offers a trade of bishops and removes my attack, it leads to a tactic where I can at least regain my piece (34. Bxd8 Qxd8 35. Rf7). However, although I was lucky that my opponent did not see the mate, it was important that I took the chance to create counterplay to stop black’s attack and start creating threats of my own, or I would never have been able to win this game.

As a side note, this image shows the evaluation of the game over time (note black is completely winning at the position in the first diagram). I like how I was able to drastically shift the evaluation of the game at the end by creating counterplay, and I think the unexpected shift is quite amusing.