Analysis
The game in detail
FM Noah Fecker (SUI, 2371) vs Lorenz Wuethrich (SUI, 2127) · 1-0
Board 8, ASK Réti vs SG Zürich · Sicilian Defence, Delayed Alapin, with e6 (B40) · 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes, plus 30 seconds per move
By Bogner AI Coach AI Coach . This analysis was written by a Bogner Chess AI coach.
Board eight, ASK Réti against SG Zürich, round seven. Zürich lead the table on fourteen match points and have the higher rated player on all eight boards. On board eight that is FM Noah Fecker, 2371, two hundred and forty-four points above Lorenz Wuethrich, who has Black. Half a point from this board is the number the team counts on against the league leader.
Wuethrich takes a pawn in the centre on move eleven, holds it until White wins it back on move twenty-two, and by move twenty-five has a good eight minutes more on the clock than the favourite. He lost the game to two moves, and he played both of them in under half a minute.
Fourteen minutes for the pawn on e5
Sicilian, delayed Alapin, and after the game has the shape it keeps: White has a pawn on e5, Black has the space in the centre, and both kings are still in the middle. Wuethrich builds up against e5 with and , takes with and lets White recapture after . Then he thinks for 14 minutes 37, the longest think of the game, and takes: , with 54:32 left after the move. Against an opponent two hundred and forty points higher, that is the announcement that nobody on this board is playing for a draw.
The pawn is real and it is paid for in tempi: , and White has the knight on c4, the bishop on e4 and the half open b-file while the black king has not castled. was close to half a pawn better and kept the capture on e5 in reserve. One move earlier, was the best move in the position. The difference is small, and it is not what this game died of.
The clock says the rest: , and cost a good half hour between them, and was the inaccurate one of the three. It was the rook that needed a square: , with b5 and the a-file for the rook. A pawn up with the king still in the centre, the slowest move is the dearest one, and the piece that had to come into the game was the rook on a8, not the bishop on f8.
FM Noah Fecker (SUI, 2371)
Lorenz Wuethrich (SUI, 2127)
16...Rb8 instead of 16...Ra7
is the best move in the position and cost 8 minutes 43. The pawn drives the bishop off e4 and takes the square away from the white pieces, and White puts the bishop back on the long diagonal with . In return Black now has e5 for the knight.
came after 5 minutes 29, with 22:36 left, and it is the error of this phase: it costs close to a pawn in value. The rook belongs on a7: , and the a-file is the black rook’s. From b8 it guards the pawn on b5, which does not need guarding yet.
The move half the players at this level would choose is , and that is worse than both of them. is a move almost nobody finds, which is why is not a reproach but a lesson: when the same rook has two squares to choose from, what decides it is which of the two it still stands well on ten moves later.
FM Noah Fecker (SUI, 2371)
Lorenz Wuethrich (SUI, 2127)
21...O-O, after thirty-one seconds
The moves before it are the strongest of the game: , , and are all four the best move in the position. Fecker gives up a piece for a pawn with and wins it back with , because the pawn attacks c5 and the knight on e5 at once. That Wuethrich cannot keep the piece is not in question. How he gives it back is.
came after thirty-one seconds, with 19:25 left after the move. That is a tactical error. The king goes to g8, and from g2 the white bishop reaches d5, where it hits the centre and the king at the same time: , White has the piece back with check, and Black is clearly worse afterwards, a good pawn worse than before. The move is humanly understandable, the king had stood in the middle for twenty-one moves. Four out of five players at this level resolve the tension first: , with the bishop active on c5. Wuethrich had the time to work that out. He did not take it.
Fecker needed 6 minutes 26 for and had 9:28 left against 20:06. His next two moves took a good half minute each, and neither of them was the move. After there was : the passed pawn goes to e6 and the rook stands behind it. In the line the bishop on f4 collects the rook Black put on b8 on move sixteen. What came was and , and a good three pawns of advantage came down to a good one. Wuethrich had a share in that with and , both the best move in the position. A pawn that has just won a piece back wants to keep going: e5-e6 is the move in every one of these lines.
FM Noah Fecker (SUI, 2371)
Lorenz Wuethrich (SUI, 2127)
31...b4, after twenty-six seconds
From move twenty-five to move thirty the position holds: , , then , and after the clocks read 17:40 against 9:00. The expensive moves were at 5 minutes 26, which cost a third of a pawn, and at 5 minutes 53. With them the lead on the clock was gone: 6:34 against 6:03.
came after twenty-six seconds, with 6:38 left. It costs a good two pawns in value and it decides the game. was the way: the queens come off, Black is a pawn down and defends an endgame with a rook and a bishop that is hard to hold and possible to play. After the pawn stands one square from promotion.
After that there is nothing left to reproach Wuethrich with. with 1:46 on the clock, after fourteen seconds, after twenty: in that position none of those moves changes anything, and he never went under a minute, nor did Fecker. Fecker converted cleanly with and , and after Wuethrich resigned, with 1:56 on his clock. A player who is worse and short of time trades off the opponent’s strongest piece instead of pushing pawns on the wing: was exactly that move.
FM Noah Fecker (SUI, 2371)
Lorenz Wuethrich (SUI, 2127)
Verdict
Wuethrich took a pawn off a master two hundred and forty-four points above him on move eleven, held it until move twenty-two, found four best moves in a row when the game turned tactical, and on move twenty-five stood with a good eight minutes more on the clock in a position that was a game again. The learning sits twice in the same pattern: before the king castles, check which enemy piece points at the square it is going to, because put it on the bishop’s diagonal and handed the piece back with check; and in a worse position with little time you trade instead of pushing pawns, because takes the queens off and gives a pawn away. Both errors came in under half a minute, with nineteen and with six minutes left, and that is what was expensive here: the time was there, the decision to use it was not. For the team, board eight was the half point the match against Zürich was counting on, one of the three losses in the 2.5 to 5.5; for Wuethrich it is a game he kept open for thirty moves against a clearly stronger opponent.
Moves
1-0
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