Post by petejwatts on Dec 19, 2010 0:12:06 GMT -5
I played in a tourney yesterday which provided a further demonstration of the principles I have expounded here, and also about Fischer mode. I was a pawn up when my opponent pulled off a brilliant bishop sacrifice on an empty square. After a lot of thought, I determined my only escape was to sac my queen for the bishop and a rook, producing a very unclear unbalanced position. Now well down on time and fed up with my opponents queen I decided to sac both my rooks just to get rid of it, so that now I was down on material as well! My only hope was an active knight and connected passed pawns which I immediately advanced, committing his nominally more powerful rook to a very passive role preventing me from queening. What followed was a fascinating battle in asymmetric warfare where I think I had the possible edge, but I was still long way down on time, but with Fischer mode I didnt get too stressed. However his rook broke out and I think I was losing when he allowed me to fork it and his king and it was game over. He made two telling comments: "I'm not good at endgames." and "If it werent for this d**n Fischer mode, I could have got you on time." He was surprised when I told him I prefer Fischer mode for that reason, and if we had been playing sudden death, I would have played differently. That one might actually manage one's time differently depending on the timing system had never occurred to him. I once came back from a bad position with about 3 minutes to my opponents 20 in Fischer mode to win. The Watts school of chess wins again!