Sunday, September 13, 2015

Grandmaster Repertoire by Boris Avrukh

today i had the opportunity to glance through "Grandmaster Repertoire 11: Beating 1.D4 Sidelines" by the famous GM Boris Avrikh. I was delighted to see some great analysis on the Blackmar Diemer gambit. It is so good to see that such a recognized chess player takes the time to look at this so called inferior opening. The bottomline of his analysis is that Black is better when playing the corretc lines. But he is quick so say that the opening complications are not to be underestimated. Guess we already knew that :-)

In any case, GM Avrukh suggests the trusted O'Kelly defense 5...c6 and comes up with some in depth analysis. I havent had to opportunity to go through all of it, but it sure seems he points out some of the weak spots in white's armory.

Thnaks Boris for giving our opening this much prime time coverage !!!

Friday, September 11, 2015

Annoying defenses should be forbidden.

Yesterday evening, I was confronted with an annoying defense, I was confident I got it right, but found myself without any advantage.

1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 exf3 5.Nxf3 e6 6.Bg5 Bb4
Not the strongest black continuation in the Euwe

7.Bd3 h6 (diagram)


The analogy with the lines after 6...h6 forced me to exchange on f6 without any thought, as white gets a great attack on the f column.

8.Bdf6 Qxf6 9.0-0 Bxc3 10.bxc3
With a pawn ahead, black decides to exchange another piece.

10...0-0 (diagram)
"Life can be simple, even when faced with the complicated Blackmar Diemer gambit"... That's sort of blakc's thinking here. Another one could be "Show me what you have for the pawn".

11.Ne5 Qe7 (diagram)

 I had been playing on automatic up till this point, under the impression that I would have a simple game. However, now I realised that things aren't that simple as I believed... I played 12.Qg4 in the above position and lost in the resulting endgame.

With silicon assistance, it seems 12.Qe2 is best here.

a/ 12...Nd7 13.Rf3 Nxe5 14.dxe5 (+=)

b/ 12...Nc6 13.Nxc6 bxc6 14.Rf5!!! (+=)

c/ 12...Bd7 13.Qg4!!!! (++)

So it seems that every annoying defense has some great refutation - but you have to find it !!