1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bc4 e6 7.Bb3 b5{Just a little nuance about this position: normally I play 7.0-0 here as it limits black's options to Be7 or b5. Be7 is not an easy move to get an advantage against in my opinion; however I consider it easier to deal with than 7.Bb3 Nbd7. Most of my analysis from my Playchess engine matches was based on 7...b5, so our challenge was to play the move which we thought he would most likely respond with 7...b5. Of course only after the match did we find out that Vladimir was working with someone else, but before the game when we decided to play the Sozin, we felt that given that Vladimir was not a usual Najdorf player, he would most likely go into the main line without hesitating too much if we played the normal move 7.Bb3, whereas if we played a somewhat less played move 7.0-0, he might start to think about it and play the 7...Be7 move. It would be interesting to hear our opponent's thoughts at this juncture...} 8.0-0 Be7 9.Qf3 Qc7 {Even though we could not see Vladimir or his expressions, the fact that he blitzed out the first five-six moves, but was now spending at least 2-3 minutes per move, told us he was not fully prepared for this line. Also, as many know, 9...Qb6 is a more double edged move(better than Qc7 in my opinion), and by him not playing it, told us he was possibly just playing to just get to a middle game position.} 10.Qg3 0-0 11.Bh6 Ne8 12.Rad1 Bd7 13.f4 Nc6 14.Nxc6 Bxc6 15.f5 Kh8 16.f6 gxh6 {Up until this move, you could find this position in the opening books as okay for black, because white usually retreated the bishop to e3. This move, 16.f6, which I found played in a correspondence game several months ago, gives black many tactical and positional problems to solve. Since we were still in my preparation, we had actually gained 2 minutes on the clock since the game started, whereas Vladimir had roughly 54 minutes left.} 17.fxe7 Qxe7 18.Qf4 b4 {The first new move not in my preparation. I had prepared Qe3, but on double checking, we found that Qf4 kept black's rook off of g8, which seemed to be his only method of obtaining counter play.} 1{At this point before he made this move, we could not find one move which helped black's position. The candidate moves by the computer, f5, a5 and others, all didn't solve the many weaknesses around black's king and in the center. Its possible that black is already lost here from a practical point of view.} 19.Ne2 e5 {Again it's not easy to suggest black's moves. We were expecting 19.Bb5 which was one of the top moves by Fritz and Shredder, although in reality if black ever exchanges his bishop for our knight, the position only gets worse for him by principle.} 20.Qxh6 f5 21.Rxf5 Rxf5 22.exf5 Nf6 23.Qe3 Qc7 {We spent some time on 23.h3 which was almost universally the top engine move. However we felt that Qe3 made him displace his queen in order to advance his center pawns, which was the only strategy that made sense for him.} 24.h3 d5 25.g4 a5 {At this point, Vladimir had caught up on time, because we were using our time advantage to probe into the position and understand some subtleties about what plans seemed to work, and others that didn't.} 26.c3 a4 27.Bc2 a3 {In hindsight, opening up this side of the board enabled us to exploit his hanging pawns better because we could attack them from either side. However during the game this wasn't clear, especially because Fritz 8 calculates slightly better for black.} 28.bxa3 bxc3 29.Qxc3 Qb6+ 30.Kf1 d4 31.Qb3 Qc5 32.Rc1 Bd5 33.Qb4 Qc6 34.Bd3 Qd7 {After this move, you can see with almost any engine, white is winning by force.} 35.Qb6 Qe7 36.Rc7 Qd8 37.Qc5 h6 38.a4 Rb8 39.Bb5 h5 40.g5 Ne4 41.Qe7 Qxe7 42.Rxe7 Nxg5 43.Rxe5 Rd8 44.Nxd4 Kg7 45.h4 Nf7 46.Re6 Bxa2 47.Rg6+ Kf8 48.Ne6+ Bxe6 49.fxe6 Nd6 50.Bd7 Ke7 51.Rg7+ Kf6 52.Rh7 Kg6 53.Rf7 Rb8 54.Rf4 Rb1+ 55.Ke2 Rb2+ 56.Kd3 Rb1 57.Kd4 Rd1+ 58.Ke5 {Black Resigned.} 1-0 {After this win, Vladimir had to win the next to force a tie break. To do so he played an unusual variation against our Gruenfeld, which we were able to solve to obtain a position which Fritz 8 evaluated as slightly better for us. Therefore he offered us a draw which gave us the victory.}

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