Yu Youhua vs. Chiu Yu Kuen at the 8th World XQ Ch., What would you do after a big mistake? Options

[Fire_Stride]

Sometimes when you face a stronger opponent in a tournament, and you lose a major piece because of a mistake, it may be time to play more carefully and try to force a draw, to minimize the fall in your ranking.

Move	Comments
5.	Red knight wants control of the center, but a single knight cannot do that alone. And the cannons would not be able to provide support in this case, because the Blue pawns would simply move forward and remove the cannon's triggers.
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7.	Red is forced to bring the knight home.
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11.	---
	At first glance, moving the cannon here would seem useless for Blue. But there is a reason. Blue sees that the Red rook is coming up to trap his cannon, so he decides to move his cannon sideways by one step so that his rook can protect it. Although the reason is valid, I think there is a better way.
	Alternate Move 11: Leave the cannon where it is and move the frontline rook two steps forward. That would allow the cannon and rook to attack Red's pawn in tandem. At the same time, it would remove the Red rook's threat against the Blue cannon. See the diagram below.
12.	---
	The knight has no where to advance after this.
15.	---
	He attacks the other side of the board with his cannon. I don't think he is aware how trapped the knight on his leftside really is. That cannon was the only thing that was keeping the knight alive, because it can be pulled back to provide horizontal protection. He should have left it where it was.
22.	This move appears to be a lure to get Blue to move his rook off to the side, away from the main battle, and into the range of Red's cannon.
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23.	He finishes off the Blue knight, an easy kill because of Blue's previous mistake in move 15.
	Good job! He does not fall for the lure and decides to move his chariot back to a more useful row.
29.	---
	This move is very daring! He moves the cannon into the path of the Red knight, who will surely capture him. The sacrifice of his cannon will serve two purposes. First, to divide the advancing Red knights. Second, to make a strong and final attack against Red with the help of his knight and rook.
34.	---
	Blue has made his last mistake, setting his knight and rook in position to be forked by the red cannon. A fork is a position where one piece can threaten two enemy pieces at the same time.
35.	Red executes the fork, leaving Blue with no choice but to resolve the situation by exchanging rooks.
	However, Blue realizes that even if he exchanged rooks, he would still be grossly outnumbered. So there would be no point in playing any further. He resigns.
	Chiu Yu Kuen (Hong Kong) played a very aggressive game, always advancing his pieces. But without realizing that his knight was stuck without a way out, he made no defensive preparations and suffered a great and early loss. However, this did not cost him the game, just yet. He took a chance and continued to play aggressively. Do you think this is wise, especially since he already lost a knight so early? While busy planning more aggression, he made more defensive mistakes. Maybe he should have switched to a defensive game immediately after losing the knight and try for a draw. What do you think?

[zcj]

Move 11: maybe black could play c8+4, pretecting the cannon and developing the left side.

Move 15: to avoid losing the horse, maybe the only move black could play is r3=8, although his position will still be bad.

It seems black's poor opening is the main cause for his loss. He launched the attack from the right side too early while forgetting to develop his left side first. Move 11 c2=3 is the turning point. Black goes down after this move.

[Fire_Stride]

Whenever I replay this game, I am amazed at Yu Youhua's ability to detect weak moves made by his opponent. Look at move #12 by Chiu Yu Kuen. Immediately, Yu Youhua calculates that the Blue knight cannot go forward beyond here, because there are two Red pawns ready to press on the knight, if
Blue were to try and push the knight further. So Red takes advantage of the situation and uses the Blue knight to force the two chariots to exchange. The beauty of this exchange is that Blue will have nothing left on row 9 to defend his weak left side. Red then brings in the remaining chariot, starting with move #15, to create chaos.