Sticking With The Plan!

Teamleague 38 Round 1 is well under way, and it befell me to get things started for team Current_Affairs. I despise the use of the word 'luck' in connection with a Chess game, but if it is possible, it must be said I had my fair share in this one.



It's the St. George / Yugoslav (depending where you come from) attack against the Sicilian Dragon, and I settled in for my first long think after 14. ... Qa5. It's a sad truth, not to mention the challenge of playing Chess, that when players start making their own decisions, they invariably make bad choices. 15. Nd5 uncovering an attack on the unprotected Black Queen and threatening the Zwischenzug Nxe7+ is a standard tactic in many variations of the Sicilian, but as is apparent here, it doesn't work in the Dragon!

Naturally I should have suspected a counter-trap, but I spent most of the time convincing myself White is good after 15. ... Nxd5 16. Qxa5 Nxe3 17. c3 Nxd1 18 Rxd1. Rybka gives 17. Qxa7 as an improvement on that line, but either way White is fine.

[Aside: I've installed a couple more engines lately, Rybka 2.2n2, Fruit 2.3.1, and for old times sake Colossus Chess 2008b in nostalgia for Colossus Chess 2.0 on the Commodore 64. They're all older (freeware) versions, but rated around 2800 so good enough for my purposes!]

After 17. ... Re8 the White Knight is trapped - something I should have been alert to after the game with mrundersun - it can't use d5 because the Bishop on e3 is unprotected. It's time to take stock and decide what I can do to make a fight of it instead of resigning right out of the opening again.

Objectively White is lost, but I can get about 3 pawns for the piece and one of them is already passed. I say 'about' because it's difficult to count them accurately. I'm winning the d-pawn as in the game, but my h-pawn is problematic. The real idea of pushing it to h5 was to weaken and double Black's h-pawns in hope of capturing them later, my back rank looks too weak to recapture with the Rook immediately. Fortunately my opponent allowed me to simply exchange it off.

This is the strategy with which I have salvaged many a hopeless "pawns for a piece" blitz game; try to keep exchanging pawns until the opponent finds himself in an unwinnable ending. Black's a-pawn can become a non-entity if he should find himself left with only it and his White-squared Bishop, the famous 'impotent pair' that can't force promotion. One implication of this is that White can use an uneven exchange rate: so long as the g-pawn comes off it can be paid for with the White f- and g-pawns, then the four Queen-side pawns can be squandered provided they buy the life of the Black b-pawn.

So there's the plan I will stick to for the remainder of the game. Oddly enough, in a practical sense at least, Rook exchanges actually get the defender closer to the objective. Black succeeds in gaining only one more pawn exchanging the Rooks off when although the two Bishops dominate the board, they cannot by their nature be used to barrage the White pawns, and with the remaining King and Knight staying active, fighting defensive possibilities abound. Had a Rook arrived on my second rank, doubtless the c-pawn would have fallen and I would have resigned... but he kept giving me a glimmer of hope.

42. f4, Ne5, g4, f5 is a typical idea in this sort of game, putting the onus on Black to accurately calculate whether he can stop connected passed pawns after taking the Knight or clean up with the commital ... Kg3. The result this time was mutual annihilation of the King side pawns and so now I only have to eliminate b6.

One last position in the game is worth a closer look.

SimianChatter (1785) vs Evilthunder (1931)
Position after 57. a4

The a-pawn has been held back until now because the King needs the entry square a4, but it is just here when White appears to be forcing through the last phase of the defensive plan that the position is most hopeless! After 57. ... a5+! the White King must of course advance but it was (fortunately!) not until after the game that I realised the intended 58. Kb5 Kc7 59. c5 fails to exchange the b-pawn due to the small detail of 59. ... Bd3#. 59. Ka6 is of course hopeless, and 40 fighting moves come to nought!

57. ... Bxd5 doubtless expected the 'automatic' reply 58. cxd5 and a won pawn ending (mate in 24 apparently), but 58. a5 secures the exchange of the b-pawn and the draw with it.

It's not a win, but it is at least a result. The error was to deviate from my plan of "prising open the h-file then sac, sac, mate" as Fischer describes this attack, and trying to out-tactic an opponent who obviously knew the theory better than me. It was after that however, a triumph of formulating a defensive plan and seeing it through to the end.