SenseiDanya (1466) vs CallTheKrankenwagen (1560)

1420Episode 05 · 1-0

During the gameIn the review

  1. French Defense: Advance Variation, Paulsen Main Line, 6...f6
  2. 1.e4 e6
  3. 2. d4 One reply, six openings Opening The French. One reply covers it and five sibling openings besides: d4.
  4. 2...d5
  5. 3. e5 Picking the Advance to teach closed play Opening The Advance, picked deliberately rather than for advantage. Closed positions are what most players get the least practice at, so this is the one worth demonstrating.
  6. 3...c5
  7. 4. c3 Name what the battle is about Strategy c3 builds the chain. And the way into a position like this is to name what the battle is actually about before choosing a move.
  8. 4...Nc6 5.Nf3
  9. 5... Qb6 Everything turns on d4 Pawn structure Everything turns on d4. Hold the chain and White has space and easy development; lose it and the whole structure collapses - which is exactly why ...Qb6, leaning on the base, is the theoretical move.
  10. 6. a3 a3: evict the c5-pawn and take the space Opening The point is b4: shove the c5-pawn away and leave the chain alone. Two pawn moves and nothing developed, and it is still worth it - that is how much the health of the chain matters here. It buys more besides. The pawn can go on to b5 and kick the knight, and the bishop gets a fianchetto later. The review dates it: a3 caught on about twenty years ago, once people saw it evicts the c5-pawn and grabs queenside space in the same motion. Bd3 at once is playable too, on the same trick - the pawn cannot be taken because of Bb5.
  11. 6... f6 Chip at the tip, not the base Pawn structure Chipping at the base of the chain, which is the less effective end. The tip is where a chain usually breaks. The main line instead is ...Nge7, and the knight is going to f5 to hit d4 - not g6. Keep your eye on what the position is about. His verdict: f6 is inaccurate here, a little too weakening. ...Bd7 and a rook to c8 is the better way to spend the move. And it is what makes White's whole Bd3 tactic work. That diagonal is the reason f6 costs so much. The follow-up ...f5 to shut things down has its own drawback, and drawbacks are the half people skip: it takes the foot off e5, hands White the centre, and frees the knight to swing to c5.
  12. 7. b4 Why fxe5 holds no fear Pawn structure fxe5 holds no fear - it only opens his king further. The review makes the case properly. It looks bad for White: Black gets a protected passed pawn and White an isolated one. But White owns d4 and can blockade it with a knight, the c8-bishop stays the famous French bishop going nowhere, and the king on e8 is left weak on a diagonal a queen can reach from h5.
  13. 7...cxd4 8.cxd4
  14. 8... a6 Reasonable, and too slow Opening Stopping b5, which is reasonable, and slow. ...a5 is the main move here, though White answers a4 and Bb5. He does not agree with a6 - but credits him for not releasing the tension on e5. Too slow is the verdict: ...Nge7 was still best, or ...Bd7 to get on with development.
  15. 9. Bd3 The standoff on the d-file Tactics Choosing this square means seeing a tactic first. It looks like the d4-pawn hangs; it does not. After Nxd4 Nxd4 Qxd4 the queens are in a standoff on the same line, and Bb5+ or Bg6+ collects the queen. The review adds what enables it: Bg6 is a discovered check, and it exists only because Black played f6.
  16. 9...Bd7
  17. 10. O-O Procrastination as a virtue Strategy The pawn needs no defending - Bg6 is still there as a check, so the king can just go. Why the queenside bishop stays home: castling is a move you will make whatever happens, but the bishop's square depends on how Black sets up. Play the forced moves first, let the opponent commit, then place the pieces that have a choice. He names it: procrastination, and one of the few places in chess where it is a virtue.
  18. 10...Nge7
  19. 11. Nc3 The knight's road to c5 Piece play The knight is heading for c5 via a4 - the same manoeuvre against the same weak e6-pawn as earlier in the run, just through a different transit point. No rook on the e-file is needed; c5 is worth having on its own. Not exf6, which releases the tension: gxf6 hands Black the g-file pointing at White's king and the chance to take the centre with ...e5. The review shows where this ends for Black: once the central play dries up, the knight lands on c5 and the position becomes miserable. He pulls up his own game from the 2005 World Youth to prove it - same French Advance, same a3 and b4, and once Black folded he got the knight to c5 and mated on the other wing. Which is what makes the French conceptually hard: if Black cannot make something happen in the centre, this is what is left.
  20. 11... Ng6 Why not take on g6 Piece play Now the threat to take on e5 is real. Not Bxg6 though - the bishop is worth too much, and hxg6 would open the h-file for his rook.
  21. 12. Re1 Make him be the one who decides Strategy Defend e5 with the rook and the tension stays. The principle behind it: make him be the one who decides whether to take. Some decisions you never have to make yourself.
  22. 12...Be7
  23. 13. Bb2 Good bad bishops defend good pawns Piece play Counter-intuitive, because the bishop is walled in by his own pawns. But a piece can be given the honest job of supporting other pieces, and those pawns are the position. Jonathan Rosen's phrase for it is talking to your pieces: this one stays home for the greater good while the others do the work.
  24. 13...Nf4
  25. 14. Bc2 Keep the more active diagonal Piece play Not back to f1 - the bishop keeps the more active diagonal. And it clears the way for Qd2, which connects the rooks and chases the knight off f4 at the same time.
  26. 14...Rc8
  27. 15. Qd2 Do the job that does the most Strategy g3 would also evict the knight, and here it is even safe - he has nothing on the kingside to punish the weakened squares. But when a job can be done in a way that does more than one thing, do it that way: the rooks were not yet connected.
  28. 15...Ng6
  29. 16. Nxd5 The locked bishop and the breakthrough Tactics It starts with an observation about a piece, not a calculation: the d7-bishop is locked and has no squares at all. A piece with nowhere to go can be attacked by a pawn and simply lost - so can a queen and king sharing a diagonal. He supplies it automatically now, but you can run the check by hand at any point in a game. Why give up a knight for that bishop: the e-file opens, and the e-file is the main road to his king whether or not he castles. Two rooks on it and the position comes apart. The rest follows. The bishop swings to b3 to hit d5, and with no light-squared bishop left Black has to tie a rook to defending it.
  30. 16...exd5 17.e6 Bxe6 18.Rxe6 Kf7
  31. 19. Rae1 Both rooks onto the open file Attack Both rooks onto the file that just opened.
  32. 19...Rhe8
  33. 20. Bb3 The Rubinstein manoeuvre Strategy The bishop joins in and the weak pawn comes under fire. Then the detour that explains what he wanted next: the Rubinstein manoeuvre, named for Akiba Rubinstein, who in 1907 against Janowski walked his idle queen all the way round to snipe from a corner diagonal. It looks like moves thrown away and it is not. Why there is time for it: in a closed position everything slows down, and a four-move journey that would be unthinkable in an open one becomes ordinary. The condition is checking first that your opponent cannot prise the position open while the queen is away. Then his own version, 2010, jet-lagged against a 2570 at Cappelle-la-Grande: Qb1 and Qa2 as a novelty, building a battery on f7, which won the game. Back to this board with that in hand - Bb3 is the same idea aimed at a different pawn. The quickest route to the same battery here is Bc3 and Qa2, loading up on d5. His closing verdict on the line he never got to play: absolutely devastating.
  34. 20... Nd8 The queen goes Tactics The queen goes. He is generous about it - this is what happens to people held under that much pressure for that long.
  35. 21.Rxb6
  36. Black resigned
End of episode 05 · 1-0 ← 04. vs rad_cliff (1294)All games at 142006. vs Jiggahertz (1344) →