Wednesday 27 July 2011

Poisoned pawn against Voon

As i promised here is my game with Richard Voon, for those who dont know him his fide rating is 1914.
It begins with a najdorf sicilian, and i played my favourite line, which is also the sharpest and most aggresive line against the najdorf, 6. Bg5, the main line followed and voon played Qb6 on move 7, this was a move first introduced by David Bronstein in the 1940's, and whites attack depends on the ability to keep the knight on d4, if Nb3 to defend the pawn then the attack will slow down. Then Paul Keres played 8. Qd2, saying you want my pawn, come and get it. After the pawn is taken whites queenside structure is destroyed and can no longer play for positional compensation, however the time taking this pawn has left black underdeveloped and a fairly unsafe king, naturally white tries to open up lines to begin the attack immidiatly, either e5 or f5, in this game i played f5, black played all the right moves and we reached a critical position where black has to make a choice on move 13. i had just played e5, a second pawn sacrifice, the main line goes dxe5 with the next moves provided. Nd5 was played, though playable it requires more knowledge of the position on blacks part to survive, Rb3, hitting the queen and defending the knight on c3 is a new move in the position which prior to this game i had prepared with the help of a computer, it is both sound and dangerous, whites aim is to play for compensation, and alot of it! Simply developing his peices and castling and white is ready for a full on assault on the black king and his underdeveloped army. So it was played, Be2 and 0-0, black finally captured the pawn on e5 with the idea of winning matierial by playing Bb4 to pin the knight and attack it for a 3rd time. However, this allowed a tactic which gives white a superior endgame at best for black, or a devastating attack at worst. If black had more knowledge of the position he would have played Bc5+ instead of Bb4 to get as many of his peices out as possible.
An evaluation of the position after move 16 is, white has completed his devlopment, while black has at least 4-5 more moves to do this, whites king is safe, blacks is not, the real problem for black is how to develop his light squared bishop and his rooks as they dont seem to have any good squares. So what is good about blacks position? Well, he is 2 pawns up, but they are doubled, lonely and weak, and can easily be attacked.
White has full compensation for the 2 pawns but he must act quickly to expoit this or black will catch up in development and just win.
Back to the game, 17. Rxb4! another sacrifice, 2 pawns down and now sacrificing the exchange, well thats not quite true, because the tactics work out that white gets 2 peices for the rook no matter how black plays, its well known that 2 minor pieces are better than 1 rook, but in this position those to pieces were blacks only developed pieces! Blacks positon will quickly crumble when he has no good pieces and white has 2 monster bishops with a very active rook and knight. In the game blacks pieces got totally tied up defending and black never had any counterplay, so there really isnt much more to say, i have provided a few possible continuations at the critical moment of the game around move 17. If you have any questions just leave a comments and i will respond well withing 24 hours unless its a saturday. 1 last comment on the game, The second last move was a fairly easy move to see if you know what tactics are occuring, but it still looks nice, just playing Nd5 to stick the knight in the way.
If there are any sharp positions you want me to disscuss let me know, otherwise ill talk a bit about the italian with c3 and d3 as this seemingly quite opening is full of tactics and complications. 

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