One of my favorite tactical games

I played this game on FICS as part of a Team League tournament. My opponent for this round was a player who was more than 300 rating points ahead of me. I was rated 1601 and he was rated 1916 at the time. Being a scheduled game and part of an organized tournament, both of us had to message each other in advance to set up a suitable playing time for the match. I can't remember what time zone my opponent was in, but it turned out that the only suitable time for us to play was when I was at work. So on the day of the big game, I was hoping that my work schedule would permit me to take one of those really long coffee breaks, to play an online schedule chess tournament game. The time controls for the game were 45 minutes to both players with an increament of 45 seconds per move. I had the white pieces and this is how the game went.

1. e4 c6 2. d4 a6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Bd3 Nf6 5. h3 dxe4 6. Nxe4 Nbd7 7. c3 h6 8. Nf3 Nxe4 9. Bxe4

I've managed to cramp Black's position, he's underdeveloped and can't move his pieces too well.

9. ....Nf6 10. Bc2 Be6 11. Ne5 Nd7

Black wants to relieve some ofthe pressure, so he offers to trade off Knights. My Knight however looks quite strong there, and I don't want to get into a meaningless trade, so I found better.

12. Ng6!?

I calculated this blow out very carefully, and was shocked that I saw a tactic like this. Furthermore, I was convinced that this was too good to be true, I saw a tactic that my 1900 rated opponent missed. This is the comment Fritz's analysis makes in reference to this move, "Registering a claim to victory." What is the idea? Well it's a mate threat

12. ......fxg6 13. Bxg6+ Bf7 (only move) 14. Qh5 Nf6 15. Bxf7+ Kd7 16. Qf5+ Kc7 17. Bf4+ Kb6

18. Qc5#

An amazing win against a much stronger opponent. I'm sure the mate was not forced, since after 17. Bf4+ he could have played e5 to avoid the mate in one, but Fritz still gives white a score of +-5.75 in this position, which means that I would have won eventually unless I played really bad.

This is a great game, with a killer tactic (with my 12. Ng6). Hope you enjoyed it.