I’ve been looking through a ton of GM games lately for various reasons, and in doing so I stumbled across this gem of a game.
The game features a lot of maneuvering with opposite colored bishops until this position is reached:
Here White takes advantage of the opportunity to get queens off while winning a pawn and gaining a mass of center pawns in the process.
After further maneuvering this position appears on the board:
Here Black commits the critical error by playing 69…Bf1, moving the bishop to a square where it doesn’t factor into the defense of the h3-c8 diagonal. After a few more deft maneuvers on White’s part Black quickly finds his king tied to the defense of a pawn and White’s pawns marauding.
This game is a very Carlsenesque example of how to maneuver until your opponent makes a slight slip which then becomes exploitable.
Here is the entire game.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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