3rd round of the Team Tournament 2011. I'm playing in two teams (of the same club) this year: teams E and F. This one's from the E. An aged Russian with lower rating, but a hard nut to crack.

He started exchanging everything he could, and got an active position. In order to take the iniciative, and get active myself I got to make a difficult decision on move number 21, sacrificing the quality for a piece and a pawn.

After that he got a little greedy, and grabbed one more pawn, after which he found himself right in the mate net that I prepared. He got a little nervous, didn't know how to defend under pressure, and lost the game.

I don't know if the sacrifice was enough to win the game, but it definitely was necessary in order to have some counterplay. Otherwise I would have stayed passive all the game with no chances to fight for a win.

I'm sure Black could have done much better, but chess is also psychology, and he was under high pressure because of the time and his wide open king. In this kind of positions sometimes one has to take some risks, even if they're not the best moves, if you want to put pressure on the game, and turn the tables. Unfortunately it doesn't always work, but this time it did