A Case For Borrowing Opening Ideas.

Occasionally one plays a chess game which causes immense pride and appreciation of all the hard preparatory work done.

I am a great fan of the evans and kings gambits but have never really had a chance to effect any ideas from the openings.

In this game however, ideas from the Evans gambit are “borrowed” and ruthlessly executed against a much higher rated opponent.

This game embodies some heavy gambit ideas:

• open lanes for the rooks

• open diagonals for the bishops

• limit the freedom of the opponents king

• attack with all the tools at ones disposal

• “force” the opponent to lose tempo by capturing your material

• sacrifice material to achieve the above five principles.

Looking at some critical moments of the game!!

on move 3:

The move order 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 .... sets up the Italian game and blacks response 3. ....h6 can be deemed a “tiny” blunder by black due to the possible loss of tempo in case white never needs the square g5 and instead seeks to blast the center wide open.

My question now was how can I make this count?After some hard thinking, I came to the conclusion that any long term plans will revolve around the freedom my dark squared bishop attains.

I will need to develop my dark squared bishop soon but to where??

I had two main ideas:

1. moving the b pawn and developing my bishop to a3. This would have to be real soon since I wanted this bishop to control f7 thus stop the king from castling . Giving the game an Evans gambit flavor.

2. castle king side followed by f4 eXf4 and finally developing the bishop to f4 giving the game a kings gambit flavor.

My choice of action would be decided by my opponents next moves. So I castled king side thus developing more pieces and waiting.

Soon enough black sought normal developing moves and finally Bc5 was played.

Position on move 5

Here my plan to blast the center open and attack blacks king in the center was put into action.

White sacrifices the b pawn in true gambit style with the move b4 and chases the black bishop and knight away with tempo.

On move 23:

From here on end, white chases and harasses the black king relentlessly until with white to move after 23 .....Kf5

Aquiet but deadly 24.c4 threatening Qh3++forces white to surrender the queen with 24.... QXR.

Like clockwork, from here on, the rest is history.

ILLUSION OF CERTAINTY

In my experience, nothing is more decieving on a chessboard than the illusion of certainty.
take this game for example.


going through it , its like I played in very different modes. may be a case for me to get checked for multiple personalities at this rate to say the least. I have picked through a few critical moments where I think snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. the full game is at the bottom

on move 19

• black has won the exchange.
• blacks rooks will dominate the soon opening e and f files
  
• Whites dark squared bishop is hemmed in by its own pawns and the oncoming e and f double pawn push.
  
• whites knight is too far away from the action.

this positional analysis in my opinion has white winning.
at this point the plan should be simple, advance the pawns and consolidate the win for black.
on move 27
the advance b6?? is poor cos it surrenders material (a pawn) for no good reason.
on move 32
I should attempt bXc5. however my choice of action is doomed due to the three pawns on the a and b file.the false security at this point evaporated along with the illusion of certainty.
this loss hurt.
lesson learnt, stick to a plan of action and cold bloodedly kill the game when you can.

COMBINATION SHOWCASE

The French defence is one hell of an opening to play against and as an 1.e4 player, I come across it alot!!
I dont mind facing any of the sicilian family (forgive the cheap pun) or any member of the scandinavian or even any of the scotch. BUT the french is just plain annoying. In this game however, I had the chance to totally tame this rogue beast (the french not my good friend aka mr mxpl......)

After the opposite side castling, the ensuing pawn storms provide me a chance to play probably one of my best combinational attacks and the ensuing earth shattering queen sac leaves my opponent with no more counterplay!!
at this point it is checkmate!!

enjoy the game and feel free to comment.

FEAR OF THE UNCERTAIN!!

As a budding chess player one attempts to absorb all the theory and "knowledge" from those better than them. we have heard all the mantras of chess and here is a painful game where despite my outplaying my opponent in the opening, I was afraid of committing myself to the uncertain.
ok...
ON MOVE 16:
The center looks like its gonna bust open and as we know bishops prefer open positions so theory would have me exchange my knight for the d2 bishop and centralize my rooks and proceed to stress my central dominance..


ahem I was scared so I chose a less committing plan...

there was no turning back from this mishap and this loss more than any other has stressed to me the importance of cold bloodedly following a plan and sticking to it..