In German, the word for a knight is Springer which is well coined given the following game. Paul makes 13 moves with his kingside knight alone but sadly, for him at least, misses a nice combination at the critical moment.
Original annotation by Paul, Mike has added some comments which I have marked MB.
All published games for the season may also be found here.
These are some of my thoughts from the game.
11. Qa4 – Not awful but perhaps Queen is not best placed here. Maybe Ng3 straight away.
15. Rf2?! – Fiddling around with later ideas of rae1 and f5. d5 now leads to advantage by taking space and controlling c6, from what I can see. f5 is also interesting.
15 … b5?! – Probably a bit of an error in the grand scheme of things. Instead black can fight for space by trying to control d5 himself.
17. Be3?! – Lets try d5 again, (and what’s that rook doing on f2)!
18. f5 – should be ok, and the rook on f2 looks a little less silly now. The choice has to be between this move and, well you know what. a4 might be possible to but I cant decide whether its good or not.
22 … Nb8? I don’t like this very much because it seems to give me a free move. So long as I play d5 at the correct moment, and don’t let Paul take on c1 first.
22. Bd3?! – Oh dear
27. Qxc6 – A poor move, as Paul pointed out.
31. Nd4?? – Seen after I played the move. I hoped that Paul would not find nc5!
On 35 … ne5 the draw offer was accepted. I thought black might be able to play for an advantage with ideas of e6 and/or f5 at some stage. A fortunate escape
Mike