Endgame mistakes - Campbell - Jiganchine (1999)

T. Campbell (1688) - Roman Jiganchine (2052) [D46]

UBC (2) 1999

Going through a lot of my games from the times back when I was a junior I noticed that a lot of them were won via huge endgame mistakes by my opponents. In other words, I was winning not via outplaying them, but rather by dragging the game for over 40+ moves, making a lot of inaccuracies along the way myself, but also increasing the probability of one huge "big bang" error. Here is one:

42. c5 Kd5

43. c6?? This is a really bad mistake, White goes very wrong. it was necessary to avoid wasting a tempo: 43. Kd3 Kxc5 44. Ke4 Kb5 45. Kxf4 Kxa5 46. Ke3 Kb4 47. Kd2 Kb3

48. Kc1 with inevitable theoretical draw. 43... Kxc6 44. Kd3 Kb5 45. a6 Kxa6 46. Ke4 Kb5 47. Kxf4 Kc4 48. Ke3 Kc3 49. Ke2 a5 50. Kd1 Kb2 0-1

Photo Blocked - Face not visible

 

Just today I noticed that Russian social networking site odnoklassniki.ru has banned one of my photos (as on the screenshot above it says in Russian "Blocked! Reason - your face is not visible"). Apparently their rules require that your face is present on every photo (so you can't add a photo of your cat, which is kind of silly). That gave me a good laugh, but also reminded that the start of this game was probably played under the worst conditions I ever played - the sun was shining directly into my face and I could not see the board at all, so I had to close my face, and that's when the photographer arrived. Canadian Junior 2002 was perhaps my worst tournament ever, but I could be happy with the outcome of that game - a draw against future champion Stephen Glinert, despite the sun. Here is the full photo:

PS. Stephen Glinert is a strong player, and I lost to him a few months later when he came to Vancouver, but googling to find out the spelling of his name pointed me at this game where he does not deliver mate in one move a couple of times (he won anyway).

Now, don't try to google for my embarassing moves, please!