Diary from the Tromsø Chess Olympiad 2014 – Day 2

Round 2

Davor Palo was super solid against Kasimdzhanov. A great draw.

Allan Stig Rasmussen was doing well against their other strong GM, Anton Filippov. Allan was supposed to rest today, but a technical error meant that he got to play. In a position where he was somewhat better he decided “to go all in” with a poor move (f2-f4), when he was briefly after lost. The reasoning was that things were not clear on the last two boards. Tomorrow Allan will get his rest. One should not forget that he played Politiken Cup just before this event and did great. A bit of rest will bring back the best in him, I am sure.

I lost in 92 moves. The game was wildly complicated and in move 21 I believed I had found a really nice defence, but a weird blindness meant that I overlooked gxf3 in response to …Rxf3. It will probably end up in one of my books, as the right move was fantastic! Instead I went into an opposite coloured bishop ending with a pawn down. It was holdable towards the end at least, but he circled the pieces well and suddenly I was lost. A good game, even though I lost.

Jakob Vang Glud was sailing in his game until he played too complacently. Instead of a big advantage, he was suddenly struggling a bit. He found a lot of good resources and outplayed his opponent a second time. Well done.

A sad loss of 2.5-1.5. Also a stupid loss. I missed a few things too many, but I guess this is why I am only 2525. I am old and I don’t do the work needed to be better than this (nor do I intend to!).

Otherwise we are enjoying ourselves here. Nikos and I are watching True Detective, which is very weird and I am reading I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, which is rather violent, but in a nice conventional laid back manner. Very enjoyable so far.