It has been a very busy week for me. Yesterday I returned from the capital of my country and it was very difficult for me to record my games as usual in the friday tournament, however, in the next few days I will upload a post analyzing some of those games I played at the airport. My schedule has changed a bit and today I was able to get to my studio in time to record the the Saturday Hive Chess tournament that 
This time the starting position was the Tal variation in the Caro-Kan defense. I have played this variation a few years ago with the white pieces. The idea is easy to follow, it is basically to expand the forceson the kingside and put pressure on Black's bishop. Currently I do not play this variation because I prefer a scheme a little more solid and without so many tactical complications, but it is certainly a weapon to take into account in a championship game.
I have to admit that I don't have much idea of how to play with the black pieces, the caro-kan has never been part of my repertoire and the consequences of that you can see in my games lol. It is well known that this is a defense quite often used by grandmasters, even in the Kasparov-Karpov duels it was used very often. But, understanding this defense takes a lot of time and practice especially because the play of the white pieces is very intuitive and the first player could get a great space advantage in no time.
As for the results of the tournament, we saw some interesting surprises: 
You can find the full games and results here
This tournament was not one of my best but as always I had a nice time with the members of the chess community. I hope next week to improve my performance and continue fighting for the ranking in the leaderboard.
Let's take a look at some of the positions I played in this tournament:
This game hurt me a lot xd. I was quite calm because I got a quite comfortable advantage in the opening and Black was left with an unpleasant situation. However 
I have no complaints about this game, samostically played much better this time and showed a much greater knowledge of this variation.
My pieces are too uncoordinated while black's pieces play with total freedom and my king is exposed to a strong attack from the pawns.
Again I am not proud of my results in the opening, white did very well so far but here for some strange reason 
I liked this game because of the concept of attacking on the queenside. The black rooks in combination with the white squared bishop work very well and create an incredible mate threat to the white king. Unfortunately this game did not count as the tournament was already over :) but it is still good.
In the video you can see my games played and how I suffered against this variation xd I hope you like it.
See you tomorrow in the final of the Chess Brothers league!
▶️ 3Speak
