Queen's Indian Update

After two seasons of pure disastrous results in the United States Chess League (USCL) I was hoping for a fresh start this season. When I played for the Dallas Destiny in the first two seasons of the USCl, it would not be an overstatement to say I single-handedly managed to put Dallas out of the playoff picture. I guess there is something about playing on a computer screen rather than playing in an actual board (I have other excuses prepared as well).

Starting my campaign with the Philadelphia Inventors this year, we had to face the Boston Blitz. The match itself was spiced up by some intimidating prematch blogs from both teams. Playing black, I managed to salvage half a point against GM Larry Christiansen in a not-so-convincing game. IM Bryan Smith maintained a small advantage against GM Eugene Perelshteyn only to squander it in a rook and pawn endgame. In the battle of the youth between Kavinayan Sivakumar and Grant Xu, a pawn blunder sealed Kavin's fate in a rook and opposite colored bishop endgame. Thomas Bartell continued to show his good form to score a full point against Denys Shmelov with the black pieces on board 3. We ended up losing 2.5-1.5, but in a good fighting match that went down all the way to the last few deciding seconds.

I played the Queen's Indian Defense against Christiansen and he came up with a pawn sacrifice in the opening. I had studied some of his games before the game, but with a player of his caliber and his wide range of openings, it was impossible for me to review all the choices. Unfortunately for me, I ended up in one of the most sharp Queen's Indian lines.

Not a perfect game by any means. The two-bishops paranoia is something I need to work on. From a reasonable position I went into a very difficult position just to avoid playing against the two bishops.