Sirpim, thanks for the game, and Barlow thanks for the input (both OTB and here in comments :) as well!

I was wondering if any of you guys would be interested in forming a 'chess study group' of sorts?.  I am an reasonably good amateur (~1850 rating) who's serious about admancement in the limited time I can devote to chess, and I find these kind of discussions with players around my level to be really helpful.  I'd like to get together a small but dedicated group of maybe 4 or 5 players who are willing to 'meet'(online, of course) at a regular time, perhap for a 1- or 2-hour block of discussion every Sunday or something.  We can meet in one of the 'live anaysis' rooms on chess.com perhaps, or some other method we come up with.  I am envisioning that each week, one member would present one of their own games annotated (each player would only have to prepare this maybe one-a-month or less) with questions/ideas/etc, and we would discuss as a group.  We could also take turns presenting on special topics of interest, etc... with the focus always being to bounce ideas off one another and learn!  I appreicate what I've learned in the Annotation Station group, and would like to suppliment it with discussions from an even more focused core group, as I feel that would be a really efficient way learn.     

  Anyway, you guys in this thread seem really smart and articulate (as well as knowing your chess!), so if any of you are interested in starting a study group, please respond here and/or message me.

-Peace 

@phmilet: you are totally right, 12. ... Ne4 is needed to win the piece. I got things jumbled up in my mind and was thinking about playing Ne4 after Nxg5 then take on h4 with the queen and win the other knight due to the mate threats against h2, but well it doesn't work...

@slurpz: I am glad you could take something away from my article. There are more coming your way ;)

@josh: Hey, you're famous ;)

You are right, that Bxg3 would have been one choice to continue and play for a win, but the game gets rather complicated then and cost much energy to figure out all the tactics. I just wanted to save some energy for the real life, so you might consider yourself lucky . But i really considered the the position to be equal with my king being open, too. And you are still up a piece and can give it back at an opportune moment.

Hey look, I'm famous!

I played white here, and felt harrassed, cornered and barely able to counter the whole game.  When the draw was offered I kept wondering if he saw some secret attack that white had that I was overlooking.

At the end I kept thinking that black would play Bxg3, then I would be borked.

I appreciate the annotations.  I often find myself wondering why people make the moves they do.

Thanks sirprim! I really like this series of articles that you are writing. This one was really informative for me since I need work in the opening. What I never do is consider like, if a piece moves several times and gets traded, then it costs that much tempi, and I never think about making my opponent's development harder to accomplish. So these are a couple of things that I learned and can try to remember in my games!

Yeah, under these circumstances I agree with your decision to draw - it does look like a risky position;

About the annotations on move 11, I might be missing something but it looks like after 12. Ndf3 g5 13. Nxg5 white walks.

You both are right, that the draw was not strictly necessary. The situation was like this:

• I did not need to win in order to proceed to the next round of the tournament
• I was lucky to slightly decrease the number of my ongoing games

If the circumstances would have been different, i would have played on, but as it stand offering a draw was a practical decision.

@phmilet: You are right about my intentions on move 11. The annotation was a little sloppy and i meant g5 not g4. I thought that to make Nh4 worthwile white should be able to get the OTHER knight to f3, but this traps the first one. And the insertion of 12. ... Ne4 13.Bb2 is nice, but not needed.

Thanks for the comments

Good game, great annotations.

On your annotations to move 11 I don't know exactly what was on your mind but I think you meant to say that 11... Bd7 12. Ndf3? is not possible due to 12... Ne4 13. Bb2 g5 trapping the knight.

Yeah probably h5 would've been a better idea; even if you managed to open the h-file you wouldn't want to have that h7 pawn in the way of your pieces. But provided that you played ...f5, maybe ...Nf7 was a good option.

As for the knight sac, well spotted. I've checked a couple of lines and it turns out they are quite sharp - you could even play for a win; White would have to find some pretty wicked defensive moves!

Well done!