Wednesday, 21 February 2018

That Timergazi-Croad Game


Rather a wild and complicated game between Layla Timergazi and Nic Croad, played in round 4 of the Summer Cup.
It started out as a King's Indian, Nic castled kingside, Layla castled queenside, and then the fun began. Nic's 'a' pawn had already advanced to the 4th rank before Layla castled, and when the pawn advanced even further to a3, and Nic started to dominate on the a1-h8 diagonal, it looked as though the white king should vacate the premises. But Layla was busy with her own attack, throwing the kingside pawns at Nic's king.
An already wild game suddenly got a whole lot wilder on the 35th move when Nic initiated a sequence of moves to sacrifice both his rooks for a knight, in order to unleash the black queen on white's king.
On the 42nd move Nic's a3 pawn advanced to a2, and on the 46th he sacrificed further material to try to keep the attack going, but even before this stage it seemed clear that Layla was going to survive this attack, and maybe even start an attack of her own.
Layla gave some material back, but by the time Nic resigned she still had a rook and a knight for a couple of pawns.

Well done to Layla for holding her nerve, a lot of us may have cracked under the pressure.




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