First of all, I would like to apologize for not updating my blog for quite a while. After not blogging after one tournament, when you think about blogging again you have to do two tournaments, and now I have played too many tournaments to really recap! So, I will instead start anew from two days ago.

Two days ago I did a simultaneous exhibition as well as a lecture on my game against Renier Gonzalez at the University of Florida. After I did the lecture, which I think was ok, I started the simul. The rules for the simul were that there could be no players rated higher than 1800 and that there would be a maximum of 25 players. I also gave each player two passes, in case they weren’t yet sure where to move.

It turned out that I got to play the maximum of 25 players, which is the largest amount of players I have so far played in a simul (this was my third simul). This one was actually much more difficult than my other two. I had about 5 tough games at some point. I was impressed by one boy who was wearing a blue shirt and also by the player who was the last to finish, another young boy.

Fortunately for me, in all of my tough games my opponent made some mistakes eventually, and so I was able to win all 25 games. So far I have won every game I have played in a simul, and I will try to keep my streak alive! I will annotate a game below, although the move orders might not be completely correct as I cannot remember all the moves.

Robson – NN 2008 Simul at UF

1.e4 I also played d4, c4, and Nf3 in other games. e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bc3+ 6.bc Ne7 7.Qg4 Qc7 The sharp poisoned pawn variation. 8.Qg7 Rg8 9.Qh7 cd 10.Ne2 Nbc6 11.f4 dc 12.Qd3 Bd7 13.Nc3 a6 This is played to prevent Nb5. 14.Rb1 This stops o-o-o because of Qa6! Rc8 15.Bd2 This is actually a mistake. White doesn’t have to protect c3 immediately and can instead play h4 first. Na5 Black brings his knight to c4. 16.h4 White can’t castle here, so he often pushes his h-pawn up. Nf5 This threatens Rg3. 17.Rh3 Stopping Rg3 and controlling the third rank. Nc4 18.Bc1 Qa5 Black has quite a good position at this point. 19.Kd1 To get out of the pin I play this move, although it allows black the possibility that he played. Nce3+ This move isn’t bad, but d4 was also good. 20.Be3 Rc3 21.Qd2 Qa3 Probably black missed the move Bc5 when he played this. 22.Bc5 Qc5 Here is a mistake by black. Although he still isn’t doing too badly, he should have played Qa2! when he is attacking my b1 rook. 23.Rc3 Qg1 24.Qe1 d4 25.Rf3 Here I should have played Rc7! When for example I threaten Rd7! Bc6 26.Rf2 Ne3+ 27.Kd2 Ng4 28.Re2 Ke7 29.Qg3 This is the critical moment in the game, where black makes the decisive mistake. 

Ne3? This loses to the game continuation. 30.Qg8 Nf1+ 31.Kd3 Bb5+ 32.Rb5 ab 33.f5! This is the point. Now white threatens f6+ and if black takes the pawn white has e6 with a winning attack. Ne3 34.f6+ Kd7 35.Qf7+ Kd8 36.Qe7+ Here black resigned because after Kc8 I could simply play f7 Qd1+ Ke4.