The Circle of Life by GM Magesh and GM Arun

Just as we had promised, you get to see the predator become the prey today. Last week there were some discussions about how the 500 elo point difference had made the game very one-sided. It is very true and we will see once again today how a stronger player can steer the game in the direction of his interest, while the other player who cannot see or judge the end position correctly lands in deep trouble eventually.

Today I have chosen the game that I played against Mamedyarov Shakhriyar in the Kolkatta Open last year. Before we go on with the game, I should make a mention about the kind of tournament I was having until this point. I had defeated Rauf Mamedov and Gadir Guseinov and managed a draw against Parimargen Negi. To say the least, I was having a good tournament.

So let us go over the game in the same format as last week and see how a Grandmaster can be made to look like a patzer by a Super Grandmaster.

The final position is very clear, white has a huge material advantage, he is up an exchange and he is threatening to win another piece with his double attack. A position that definitely warranted me to resign and that is exactly what I did in my first classical game against a 2700+ rated player.

Let us rewind about 10 moves now. The position below does not look that bad for black (in fact the black knight on d4 looks daunting). However, if one takes a closer look at the position it is clear that the black knight's nice picnic on the d4 square is soon to come to an end. White is about to break the e5 pawn with f4 and if I intend to support it with f6, he can trade one pair of pawns and bring his next one to f4 and break the e5 pawn again. Also white's two bishops give him a clear advantage in most of the possible endgames. But my main hope was the white king. I believed that after the move a4, I would eventually be able to launch an attack. 

After our game I was fortunate enough to have a chance to have a postmortem analysis with Mamedyarov. For some reason I just could not believe his suggestions in the position that I was already worse. Something just kept telling me from the inside that I had some resources in the position and my pig-headed mind was always skeptical about white's king's position. Of course when I got back home and checked my position with the computer it was very clear that my position was already much worse and you should always trust a 2700+ player in his judgment of a position.

Going further back in the game, I had to make an important decision out of the opening in the position below. I had to decide the pawn structure in the center. I can either go d5 or d6. This decision also depended on the middle game structures that I was comfortable with. Eventually I walked into a middle game position which I could not judge correctly from my knowledge.

This game was probably not as easy to explain as the one last week, but in my opinion it still emphasizes the point of how a stronger player is always seeing farther and judging the resulting positions better and as a result taking the game away in a very subtle manner from the weaker player. Hopefully our readers enjoyed this one. Just like our last game, we have attached the game as a whole in the end for the readers to go over it in one shot.