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So I’m looking at some high level games in the Caro-Kann from this year and I see this game between Kulaots and Kuzubov from the Keres Memorial from January of this year, played in Tallin, Estonia.
First thing I notice is that after the 3.e5 Advance Variation
Kuzubov plays 3…Bf5 instead of the more modern 3…c5, which has been played by Nakamura among others.
After move 33 the following position is reached:
Now, I want you to be honest and tell me in the comments how long you think you would play on for if you were Black. You’re up a pawn, but all the pawns are on the same side. I know a lot of people would just agree to a draw here after playing perhaps a handful of moves and go home.
Three moves later and in this position White decides to trade rooks:
That leaves us with this position after each side has completed 37 moves:
Surely it’s time to go home now, right? Or is it…
Black now begins a series of long maneuvers seeking to gradually improve his position. I once heard Ben Finegold say in a lecture that one of the things that separates GM’s from everyone else is the willingness to just shuffle pieces waiting for their opponent to make a mistake.
It takes another 92 moves, but Black grinds White down.
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Many of you will hopefully be familiar with the Star Wars reference above.
In this case my opponent thought in a blitz game just now that he was trading pawns. Here’s the position a couple of moves prior:
Of course trading my a pawn for his c pawn does leave me with a passed pawn, so already I’m happy.
After 17.Bxc6 Bxa2 I now play 18.Ba4 to keep my opponents bishop off of b3. The problem with the bishop making it to b3 is that it controls d1 and therefore forces me to give up the d file.
My opponent here mistakenly plays 18…Bb3 anyway which loses a piece after 19.Bxb3.
My opponent seems to think it’s just a trade and so first exchanges rooks with 19…Rxd1 20.Rxd1 Rxb3
But of course I now play 21.Rd8+ Bf8 22.Bh6 and there’s no escaping the mate.
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One of the nice things about learning openings by paying through games is that you get to see some amazing games you would never have otherwise looked at.
Here are two more fun attacking games from this morning. Enjoy!
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As I have mentioned in a prior post, one of the things I’ve been working on lately is my White lines against the French.
One of the main ways in which I have been doing this is to play through a couple of hundred games between strong players and construct pgn files from those games.
In doing so I do come across some amazing games. Here’s one which features a beautiful and precise knight ending.
Although the game is recent, it looks like it belongs in a classic work on endings. Enjoy!
One of the issues I’ve always had in chess is an overattachment to material. For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to alleviate it, but it’s not such an easy thing.
It’s one thing to know that you should sacrifice material, but quite another to know how to sacrifice it.
Lately I’ve been reading the book Beyond Material by Croation GM Davorin Kuljasevic in an effort to free myself from such material attachments.
To start the book off he shows several examples designed to show players that material isn’t always the deciding factor. This example is particularly concrete.
The game is between Yuri Solodovnichenko and Valerij Fillippov from 1999. Here is the position that opens the example:
White is in serious trouble. Not only down a pawn, but also with quite a loose king. He finds a brilliant drawing idea.
31.Re1 and now Black correctly takes on a2 with 31…Bxa2. Now after 32.b3 Bxb3 33.c4 Black goes wrong by taking the pawn on c4 as well. A move such as 33…Rf8 and Black has an overwhelming advantage.
So why the problem with taking on c4? Well, in this position there is an amazing concrete way to draw:
Here is a position from Tarrasch theory that has been fascinating me for a bit:
Here White takes on h7 with check as after 16.Bxh7+ Kxh7 17.Nxe6 Black can’t exchange queens due to the intermezzo of taking on f8 with check by White.
What fascinates me about this line is that White does something we’re generally taught not to do in an opening. We learn early on that exchanging two minors for a rook and pawn in an opening is bad. Of course here White gets a second pawn as well. Fascinating ideas here.
Here are a couple of games in this line…
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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As mentioned in my last post, I have begun to create pgn files when analyzing my games.
I have started with an opening that has plagued me on the White side for time out of mind…the French.
I’ve decided to base my lines on the Tarrasch, specifically the setup with 7.Ne2.
My methodology at this time is to pull all of the games between players rated a minimum of 2400 for the last five years and play through all of them to get a feel for which lines I like, then I’ll build more in depth files from there.
But for now I have around 50 games to go look at. Feel free to look at them with me as I have attached them in a file called “Francophile.”
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.
I was listening to last week’s interview with Viswanathan Anand on Perpetual Chess and something that Vishy said he used to do during his youth was to write down his thoughts following a game.
Not analysis, which of course also happens, but general impressions of what happened along with thoughts of what can be done differently next time.
So I decided to appropriate this idea since it seems awfully sensible.
I am currently playing in the US Amateur Team North in Schaumburg and I have done this for the first three rounds. Here are my notes along with some clarification of what I was driving at.
Game One – The Notes
Terrible opening. Learn the lines or simplify the repertoire. Off the cuff is dumb.
Keep fighting. Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Work on rook endings. No excuse for not knowing if the R+P vs R ending was drawn or not.
Need to spend at least one hour on the opening during analysis later for every game.
Time to create a full set of deep pgn files.
Game One – The Explanation
In this game I faced the French. I haven’t been getting good positions against the Winawer so I decided to play 3.Nd2 off the cuff. I quickly wound up in a terrible position and was lucky to claw my way back into some semblance of a fighting chance. Eventually I was ground down in the ending.
I kept trying to fight my way back into the game and my opponent helped greatly by missing some simplification ideas which would have made the win trivial. When all was said and done it was for naught, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing. It’s always worth doing.
The game concluded in a R+P vs R ending where I was *pretty sure* I was lost but I wasn’t 100% sure. There’s no excuse for this. I should be 99% sure or better. This will require a lot of work, but I believe it’s vital.
During analysis I need to spend at least one hour going over the opening. In this way I’ll eventually completely learn the ideas in the openings I play. I’m getting better, but it’s not good enough.
To that end, when spending that time on the opening I’ll eventually create a set of very deep pgn files for every opening I play with either color. I’ll be able to regularly review them and I will get strong here. It will happen.
Game Two – The Notes
Opening repertoire totally exposed. To not play lines out of fear is just dumb.
Sicilian worked out, but seriously…what is that?
Again, deep pgn files are needed.
Candidate moves.
Sleep is important. No point in going to a tournament if you’re not going to take it seriously.
One move blunders happen on four hours sleep.
Game Two – The Explanation
My opponent played 1.e4. Lately I have been playing 1…e5 but I play the Two Knights against 3.Bc4. However, there have been too many times where my understanding of the position has been less than ideal. So at the board I sat there for a minute or two essentially saying to myself “Kids play the Italian a lot. Do I really want to be down a pawn against an expert in a position I don’t truly understand?”
Of course this is wrong thinking. Play your prep. If it sucks, make it better, but to not play it out of fear is wrong. OK, it’s not like I’m drifting aimlessly in the Sicilian since I played it for years, but seriously?
As for the Sicilian, of course this is another opening that shouldn’t be played off the cuff, which is exactly what I did. In the end it worked out since I was completely out of the opening and into the late middle game.
Again this is where deep pgn files will help.
Candidate moves are vital. I have played many moves lately where I only considered one move, not multiple moves. That happened in this game several times as well.
Sleep is important. I was up until after 2:00am even though I knew I had to get up at 6:00am. Not smart.
After being completely equal I threw the game away on a one move blunder by overlooking a simple tactic. Had I gotten more sleep the odds would have been less likely that I would blunder like this. More importantly had I selected at least two candidate moves and compared them the odds I would have blundered in this fashion would have been even less.
Game Three – The Notes
For reals, let’s work deeper on openings. I just need a feel for positions.
Keep fighting. It works.
Learn to stay objective. It felt like I was much worse though it turned out I was fine.
Candidate moves were my friend. Bigly.
There’s no substitute for focus.
Game Three – The Explanation
Again I felt lost in the opening. I decided to stick with 1.e4 but after 1…g6 I transposed into the White side of the King’s Indian. I wound up overlooking some positional ideas for my opponent and before you knew it I felt like I was far worse.
However, I did keep fighting and fighting. After getting past what felt like the worst of the trouble my opponent repeated and offered me a draw.
After the game, when I was entering it in ChessBase I turned on the engine at a couple of points to quickly check the eval. I wasn’t looking at lines or analyzing moves, just checking to see if I was really as bad as I thought I was. Turns out that at none of the points I checked was I as bad as I thought.
This time I made sure to have at least two moves to choose from. It kept me from going astray and I was able to hold on to the thread.
I stayed focus and just put everything I had into holding on and not getting steamrolled. That effort paid off when my opponent offered me a draw.
So there you have it. I feel like I got something out of this exercise so I plan on keeping it going.
Listen to the interview with Vishy on Perptual Chess:
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter. Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.
If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.
Sometimes I see a position and I think that if only I could understand some aspect of it that I would be closer to understanding chess on a much deeper level.
Take this position for instance. The game is Radjabov-Mamedov from Shamkir 2018
Here White has just played 15.Ng5 which seems tantamount to offering a draw. So mentally I’m thinking “OK, 15…Bxg5 16.Qxg5 Qxg5 17.Bxg5.” However, after 15…Bxg5 16.Qxg5 Mamedov plays 16…Bg6
OK, now this I can puzzle through and understand. If Black would have continued through with my idea then he would have been developing White’s dark squared bishop for free.
So after 17.Qxd8 Rxd8 18.Be2 Nb8 19.Be3 Nc6 20.Rfc1 this position is reached:
Here Mamedov plays 20…Rdc8.
This is one of those “which rook” positions that drive me nuts. My first thought is that maybe there’s a problem with 20…Rac8 21.Bg5 Rd7 22.b4, but as I looked at the position I realized there was an immediate tactical refutation after 21.Bg5
Here Black would simply play 21…Nxd4 as the rook on d8 is impervious to capture due to the fork threat on e2.
So this leaves me wondering…what is the real difference. Clearly there is one, but what?
Food for thought and something to work on.
Here is the entire game:
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
If you like this blog, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter. Any money I raise will go towards lessons and stronger tournaments.
If you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me achieve my dream.
