Office Chess Game

This game was played at the office where we made 2-5 moves per day at infrequent intervals during the month of April. It’s almost like playing chess by mail. The board sits at my desk giving me an advantage. This is the first time I’ve played the Scheveningen Variation of the Sicilian Defense opening. The Dragon Variation is familiar to me, and I became intrigued taking a different route. After the game, I looked up the opening in Modern Chess Openings 13 (DeFirmian and Korn, 1990) to learn more about. After the 6th move, we fall out of the main opening.

I played white. The game remained even, both sides taking a strong position in the middle, until the 16th move, shown below, where black castles. Stronger would have been to 16 … Nxe3 to weaken white’s hold over the middle.

[Event "Office game"] [Date "2013.04.25"] [White "Shrock"] [Black "O'Bryan"] [Result "1-0"] 1. e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 e6 7. f3 b5 8. g4 Bb7 9. Qd2 Be7 10. O-O-O Nd7 11. g5 Nh5 12. Kb1 g6 13. Bh3 Rc8 14. a3 Ne5 15. f4 Nc4 16. Qd3 O-O 17. Nxe6 fxe6 18. Bxe6 Rf7 19. Nd5 Nxe3 20. Qxe3 Bxd5 21. Rxd5 Rc6 22. Bxf7+ Kxf7 23. f5 Bxg5? 24. fxg6 hxg6 25. Qxg5? Qxg5 26. Rxg5 Rc5 27. Rf1+ Kg7 28. h4 Nf6 29. Rxc5 dxc5 30. e5 Nd5 31. e6 Kh6 32. Rf7 Kh5 33. e7 1-0 your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard; alternatively your wordpress theme might suppress the html iframe tag from articles or excerpts

Both sides made mistakes later in the game. Black’s move 23 … Bxg5? was an expensive exchange giving up control of the center. White mixed up the order of exchanges on moves 25 and 26 moving Queen first instead of the Rook. White had the advantage, and black resigned.

The difficulty about playing a single move at a time during the work day is forgetting what one was thinking about previously. Of course, the game is for fun. It’s nice to take the mind away from a challenging problem or the usual routine for a few minutes. My chess experience is primarily in solving puzzles, so it’s great to play a game as well.