My best game of all time, by Maxime Morin

Hi everyone, for this blog, I would like to present to you my best game of all time. Of all the games I played during my life, I still consider this game to be the one where I played the most accurately. Of course, my opponent did help me a little bit during this game but my play was almost flawless.

It happened a little bit over 4 years ago in 2015 at the AIDEF Championships. I had been on a 14 years layoff and I had not played since 2001. There were two sections for this tournament which were the Open section and the U1600.

I was playing in the U1600. I had a good start and if I remember correctly this game was played in round 4 or 5 and before that game, I had a draw and I had won all my other games.

I had the White pieces and my opponent was Black. I opened the game with 1.e4 and my opponent replied with c5.

I decided to go into uncharted territory by playing a Closed Sicilian with 2.Nc3.

I also wanted to get my opponent out of the book as soon as possible. My opponent played Nc6 and then I played 3.Nge2. The next few moves were e6,

4.g3 d5

5.exd5 exd5

6. d4 Be6

7.Bg2 and now we see that d5 is gonna be White’s target. My opponent played c4 which I consider a waste of time.

I played 8.0-0 and my opponent replied g6 which is too slow.

White now stands better and has now the initiative. Also, the Black king was still in the center. Now I played 9.Nf4 threatening to win the pawn on d5 and Black played Nf6 to defend it.

I played 10.Re1 and then followed Ne7

11.Nxe6 fxe6

12.Rxe6 Kf7

13.Qe2.

Now I have control of the e-file. My opponent played Nf5 planning to pick the pawn on d4 and to fork my rook and my queen but the game is over. I played Bg5! and as planned my opponent played Nxd4

but I had the crushing move 15.Rxf6+!. Here Black played Kg7

and I replied with the strong 16.Qe5.

The last move of my opponent was Nc6 and here there is more than one winning move. I did not bother calculating that much. I played the move 17.Rxc6+ and here Black resigned.