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Editors note: Thanks to all those who have answered our Speelman's Agony survey. The survey will remain open for another two weeks, after which we'll announce the prize winner, in column #109.
This week's game are by Mark Houlsby who plays for Ulverston Chess Club in Cumbria and often frequents my Twitch stream as Tchitcherine.
When I solicited the stream for games for here, Mark kindly obliged with three games.
The first, which is indeed Agonising is characterised by Mark thus: “White's play was excruciatingly insipid, and was duly punished.”
The second is a hard fought battle which ended in a draw, and he writes:
I was reasonably happy with the timing of kingside pawn breaks in this game. They helped to secure a draw against a more highly graded player.
The third is a nice attacking game in which he explains:
Not long ago I should think that the effect which my Queen's being en prise might have produced would have provided sufficient provocation to persuade me to exchange it, however, one thing that I learned from Igor Nataf, who used to teach me, remotely, on ICC, before he became a full-time mentor to Radjabov, is that if a piece is on the board, it's playing for you (in other words, in many circumstances the initiative overrides other considerations). So, not minding that my Queen was en prise, I ran with the initiative and conducted an attack.
All notes are mine apart from an aside quoting American GM Ben Finegold, at the end of the third.
Click or tap any game in the list to switch
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