Game Spotlight: NCC Closed Tournament 3

An interesting aspect of running a training session on an opening is that sometimes, you get to feature your specialty in a tournament.  This happened in round 1 of the NCC Closed Championship, when Willy Simons, who gave a lecture on the Alapin Variation of the Sicilian Defence at the club back in May, played it against Mukiri Gilruth.  As happens in most Sicilian games, the result was an exciting, double-edged affair:

Double-edged games are often tricky to play, as they’re most likely to make basic principles irrelevant.  Instead, it’s necessary to take your time, calculate as much as possible, and be willing to bail out and trade down to an endgame if it’s likely the game will turn against you.