Playing the Marshall with Moniczka - a good chess player

After posting my previous blog with a header "Greek Gift Helped Marshall win in Ruy Lopez", I was lucky to have played by random a good blitz player from Poland with the username Moniczka.

As expected, when your opponent doesn't know about the greek gift trap in the Marshall Attack, it is going to be an easy win as you will see from my first game:

Next game, I played white and as I have written in my previous blog that I like 2.f4 all the time in a Grand Prix Attack theme, I was able to gain an immediate advantage. However, Moniczka's game has a sign that she belongs in a different league and she was able to turn the table around but the clock saved me by a split second, whew!

Third game, she opened once again like the first, so I wanted to see if she figured it out already, she was still thinking what to do and instead of the Be3, she just pushed her bishop to Bd2. So she is still in the trap and I was supposed to have an easy win but having that feeling of overconfidence made me lose a "won" game. I was lucky enough to have escaped with a draw.

What she did is reminiscent of my game with a well-known chess celebrity when I was ahead by a piece but because I was not paying attention on the tactic she was cooking in her pot, woohooow, I almost fell from my chair, when I saw a discovered attack coming, I was a move too late! The same here, a set up for a discovered attack and she ran away with my Q.

A sign that she plays well. A real chess player, a good player, human who you would want to be playing regardless of the rating. Unlike those robot players here who want to make you believe about their chess skills although everybody knows that they are just using a software. Fooling themselves, hah..

The third game is shown here (its a draw):

Fourth game, she played well and she had me with a vengeance. Although I almost had her on time (that explains why I did not resign). Game 4 is here:

GGs Moniczka!