MidnightRhino (1702) vs SenseiDanya (1512)

1440Episode 07 · 0-1

During the gameIn the review

  1. King's Indian Defense: Samisch, Normal Defense
  2. 1.d4
  3. 1... Nf6 Hypermodern: let him build the centre Opening The chat is asked to name the opening, having no say in it: the King's Indian, decided before the question. Hypermodern, and the bargain is stated before a piece moves - White is allowed to build the big centre, because a centre that big is also a centre that can be attacked. Black does not contest it now. He plays against it later.
  4. 2.c4 g6
  5. 3. f3 The Saemisch, and the diagonal it weakens Opening The Saemisch. f3 is a legitimate move - it props up e4 and lets White have the broad centre he wants - and nothing needs to be done about it, which is the whole point of the opening. The standing instruction for the moment f3 appears: part of your brain gets allocated to the diagonal it has just weakened. A queen may turn up on h4, and a great many King's Indian tricks end there. The review says it from the other end - f3 is positionally risky, and the weaknesses it creates are what Black plays against for the rest of the game.
  6. 3...Bg7 4.e4
  7. 4... d6 The one push that has to be stopped Opening The one thing that cannot be allowed is e5, and this is what stops it; after it Black castles and development is finished. Asked later what happens if White pushes e5 anyway, the answer is that Black is glad to take: the queens come off on d1, White's king has given up the right to castle, ...Nfd7 turns on the e5-pawn, and ...f6 opens the bishop again. The piece that looked blunted by the pawn chain is the piece that gets going.
  8. 5.Nc3 O-O
  9. 6. Bd3 How White comes to neglect his own centre Opening Instructive rather than losing, and he stops to write it down. It is very easy for White to neglect his centre in this opening, and this is how it happens: the bishop steps in front of the queen and severs her connection with d4, so the pawn she was supporting becomes a target. The review's verdict is an inaccuracy, not a big mistake. Be3 is the main move, and the Saemisch is one of the very few King's Indian lines where White genuinely does castle queenside.
  10. 6... Nc6 Hit d4 with a piece, not a pawn Piece play A trick question, because the King's Indian answer is normally a pawn - Black hits d4 with ...c5 or ...e5. Not yet. Either one invites d5, White pushes the pawn past, and the centre closes, which is the last thing Black wants. So the pressure comes from a piece instead. And if White plays d5 here anyway, ...Ne5 hits the bishop; say it drops back to f1, and then compare that position with the one after ...e5 d5. The difference is one pawn: still on e7, it is free to chip at d5 with ...e6 and ...c6, and there is a knight on e5 rather than a pawn. Opening the centre is what Black is playing for, because White is the one who created the weaknesses when he played f3. The illustrative game is Hungaski-Liu from an internet event in August 2020: ...e6, ...c6, the centre comes apart, and the grandmaster with the white pieces is lost in eighteen moves. Not typical, he says, but that is how fast it can go.
  11. 7.Nge2
  12. 7... Nd7 Retreat to open the bishop's diagonal Piece play Not ...e5 yet - the knight goes backwards first. The reason is the bishop. With f6 vacated, the piece that looked shut in behind its own pawns is looking straight down the diagonal at d4, and it keeps looking through the e5-pawn once that arrives; the square is covered before any knight goes near it. The same retreat answers 8.d5: ...Ne5 hits the bishop, which has no square left where it still does its job, so Black takes it.
  13. 8.Be3
  14. 8... e5 The strike that welcomes d5 Pawn structure Now the pawn goes. The push that was premature two moves ago is fine here: White can still answer d5, but what comes with it is d4, and the bishop is already looking at it.
  15. 9.d5
  16. 9... Nd4 The square the x-ray already covers Piece play Two questions with one answer - the square the bishop x-ray defends is the square the knight occupies. The whole ...Nc6, ...Nd7, ...e5 order existed to put a knight here.
  17. 10.Qd2
  18. 10... Nc5 Twenty-four-hour parking Piece play The knight on d7 is standing in the bishop's way, so it needs somewhere permanent to go - twenty-four-hour parking, at Manhattan prices. c5 is it, and both knights are now bearing down on White's position.
  19. 11. Bb1 Clear the line, then count again Piece play A good move, and worth seeing why. Stepping off d3 clears the file for the queen, so d4 is attacked three times - knight, bishop, queen - and defended twice, by the e5-pawn and by the bishop's x-ray behind it. On the count, the knight has to move.
  20. 11... f5 A pawn for an open position Strategy It does not move. Black lets the capture happen: taking on d4 costs White two moves, and Black spends them getting ready to attack instead. f5 is the move that does it, and everything comes alive at once. It also rules out the flashy line, which he shows precisely because it fails: the queen and rook do sit on forkable squares, and ...Nb3 axb3 Nxb3 really does hit both, but White has a reply that traps the knight where it lands, and the exchange Black thought he was winning never arrives. The review calls capturing twice on d4 the thing White should have done. Black recaptures, opens every file and diagonal he can, and goes ...Qh4; White is probably still better there, and the concept - a pawn given up to open the position - is what is meant to survive.
  21. 12. Bh6 Type-2 undefended piece Tactics Panic, and he understands it, but it loses on the spot. The bishop on h6 is a type-2 undefended piece: protected, and protected by exactly one other piece. The blunder is Bh6, and the refutation is ...Qh4+.
  22. 12... Qh4+ The h4 check that f3 invited Tactics Both observations meet here. The knight left f6 two moves ago and cleared the queen's road; f3 weakened the diagonal she travels down. The check has to be answered first, and then a bishop attacked twice and defended once simply falls. That is the game. The mechanism generalises, and he stops to say so: it is how Black unloads his own bad bishop in the f3 systems. Play ...Bh6 yourself, let White take, and ...Qh4+ brings the bishop back - the worst piece on the board traded off by tactical means. He calls this a positional combination, a positional aim reached with tactics rather than with manoeuvres, and worth keeping for whenever a piece needs trading and there is no quiet way to do it. The example is his own game against Benjamin Buck, from the white side of a Gruenfeld: Black hands over a knight so that a queen move wins it straight back and takes White's fine knight on d5 with it. He won the endgame anyway, but Black had equalised.
  23. White resigned
End of episode 07 · 0-1 ← 06. vs Jiggahertz (1344)All games at 144008. vs uuuuuuuuuuuh (1224) →