Ninety Nine

Just one shy of a hundred moves, this is by far the longest game I had played. My opponent, an American girl, played with a rare fighting spirit. The game started with a very good tempo and you can see some exciting sparring in the middle game. I managed to come out of the middle game with a slight advantage; however, because she was so resilient, I had to focus and play accurately for more than fifty moves to maintain my slight advantage from the middle game til the end game. Interestingly, here is an important lesson on zugzwang, which in German refers to the 'compulsion to move'. In the endgame, because each side MUST make a move at their turn, in some circumstance this can work against the player making the move; in other words, the player compromises his/her game regardless of what moves he/she makes. And that was instrumental to my long and hard march to the light at the end of the tunnel.

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