It was the 8th round of the second season of the Hivechess tournament and this time it was a single step up for me from 6th from the previous round, to 5th position in the 8th round. Nothing prepares you for tough chess like when you have to berserk your opponent in a must win game. I was cut in the middle when I am to win my games but I started off with a losses.
It was a round for victory for Jaki with how brilliantly he played. Lately I have not be enjoying our games because of how he put plays me. He has a dynamic way of play positional chess from unorthodox opening. Jaki and the IM finished in the 1st and 2nd but that's not all. They both play unorthodox opening and they play it well to get the wins.
As for a me it was a run through on berserk. I needed all the wins I could get and as fast as possible. The time control of 4 minutes could take a long time for players before you end the game. The winners of the tournament, all had to use berserk inorder to play more games. So I did the same. This brought a total of 58% win rate for me and I would that is extremely lucky for me given my rough start.
You can always tell that once it gets to time scramble, there is a lot of poor play that becomes present in the game and that is exactly what happened in this game. Why would I use my rook to capture a well defended pawn. I simply gave up a rook easy without thinking twice. At that point it wasn't rocket science for my opponent when he went ahead to capture it as fast as he could. Who does not like a free piece.
In the light of all things, I did it again in a other game against the IM and this time it was the bishop. I left my bishop hanging for no reason, simply because I didn't see the attack on the piece. Against an International master, dropping a piece is close to losing the game and it's that simple. The moment that happen, I knew it was game over for me. It didn't waste much time at all. I tried to hold the position for as long as I could but when all his pieces got into good squares, it was game over for me.
Still a good performance in my book.