I Got Blasted by Big Chungus!

I just played my biggest match in High Technology High School’s chess division against the Christian Brothers Academy. Our team squeaked by with a 3-2 win, but the match was too close. I lost at second board to a player who insisted on being called “Big Chungus.” This is the story of how I got blasted by Big Chungus.

Shore Chess Division HTHS-CBA (Away): Board 2

This is my current opening for White: the Réti Opening, specifically the Nimzo-Larsen Variation. Here, I try to take control of the center of the board with my b2 bishop and f3 knight, targeting the e5 square. White wants to anchor his knight on the e5 square to prevent black from controlling the center. At the moment, black attempts to push his pawn to e5, and I must stop him.

I managed to take control of the e5 square as planned, and secured it with a pawn on f4. In fact, my b2 bishop is so powerful that it has opened up an opportunity for a tactic… Can you find it? (See below for the solution)

After just 15 moves, I had won the exchange from Big Chungus! After a few moves, I solidified my pawn structure.

Here, white has an awkward pawn structure, but it was still well worth the exchange.

A lot of stuff happened here, though. I gave back the exchange (Black’s bishop pinned my rook to my queen) and black started to make a break on the queenside. This game had definitely changed course. Now I had a decision to make. With one queen, one knight, and one rook, would I continue to attack the kingside, or would I fight for the queenside instead? I chose the kingside, although this was the decision that lost me the game.

Rf1 was a risky move. If black played Rxa3, Ng5 would completely wreck black and I would win almost immediately. However, after Bd8, I was basically done because any of my queenside efforts would be too slow.

After a few more moves, my queenside fell apart. As the game dragged on, I (fatally) refused to stop attacking the kingside, and Big Chungus as black slowly forced a win.

In the end, I underestimated Big Chungus. However, there are a couple of big reasons I lost. First, I was careless in giving back the exchange. But even worse than that, I abandoned my queenside when my kingside attack was weak. I was not strong enough to make real threats with just three pieces, and it backfired terribly. When I play my next match against CBA (next month), I hope to make up for this loss and (hopefully) get a complete 5-0 win against CBA.