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As I mentioned yesterday, I am now training for the US Senior Open. This morning I kept up the routine of working on four exercises from Sherlock’s Method.
So far, here are my results. Out of eight puzzles, I have gotten four correct, three incorrect, and one I am giving myself partial credit for because I saw the main idea but not the purpose of it, so while I had a couple of moves correct, I missed some of the follow-up moves.
This is why I insist on writing down all of my analysis. There is no way to pretend, “oh yeah, I saw that,” since it’s not on the page.
The next piece of work that I need to do is to determine what line of the Caro I want to play against the starting move order of the classical variation. Take this position:
Here the main three moves are 4…Bf5; 4…Nf6; 4…Nd7. The one that seems to be the most in vogue is the 4…Nf6 line, but I don’t know how I feel about it. I have never played it or 4…Nd7, so I can see some value in deeply learning one of those systems. On the other hand, there is something to be said for sticking to the lines that I know best. Something to think about in the coming few days.
In the meantime, here’s a position from So-Van Foreest Zagreb 2022 Blitz.
I was checking this game as I saw it was an 0-1 game in the 4…Nf6 line of the Caro. In this position White has a massive edge, but Wesley slipped by playing the natural looking, but less precise 23.Rae1 instead of a move that holds the bigger edge. What move did Wesley miss? Solution below.
Here is the entire game.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
What Wesley Missed
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23.f4 keeps the position at a little over +5 according to Stockfish 15