Pawn sacrifice in Closed Sicilian

This position could have occurred in one of my recent online games

  White to move

White sacrificed a pawn (on b2), but has a surprisingly (to me) strong initiative.
14. e5!! dxe5 15. Nc6!! Out of nowhere, White generates dangerous threats! Black king is stuck in the center and his queenside pieces are not developed, so White opens up files and diagonals just on time.

now probably  best is 15... Qc7 and something like this could happen: 16. Bb6 Qd7 17. Nxe5 Qxd1 18. Rfxd1 O-O 19. Bc5 Re8 20. Bd6 Rd8 21.Bxb7 Bxb7 22. Rxb7 Ne4 23. Nxf7 Rdc8 24. Rc1 and and White maintains winning chances.

But what if Black wants to be ‘shown’?

15…dxc6?! 16. Bxc6+ Bd7 17. Bxa8 Qxa8 18. Qd6!

Black to move. Rb8 is a decisive threat. White is winning. 18… Ne4 19. Rb8+ Bc8 20. Qc7 +-

Typical mistakes in IQP positions – YouTube video

Here is an older video I actually recorded a while ago (but only now had time to go to and do some minimal editing). I go through my blitz games and look at different ways Black can go wrong while trying to complete his development.

Moral of the story:
Memorize an opening variation – you may be lucky to win a single game.
Understand typical tactical ideas in a common pawn structure – you will win multiple games while your opponents play what they think “common sense moves”.
 

PS. Yes, unfortunately the audio is not very loud, my video editing skills are still non-existent.

Book review: Opening Preparation by Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov

This book was written before computer databases became mainstream, but it has remained surprisingly relevant until now. It is based on the lectures done in Dvoretsky’s school in the early nineties, and covers different aspects of opening preparation:

1. General principles of the opening – how to develop pieces, secure the king, etc, but described from the Grandmaster’s point of view for a somewhat advanced audience
2. How to choose an opening repertoire – this is something every player has to do, and there is little written about it
3. How to prepare for a specific tournament game. There is a balance between trying to memorize too much, and not knowing anything about your opponent, so Yusupov reveals his secrets
4. How to study ideas behind a couple of specific opening setups – with less focus on memorization

As you can see, the tools you use – Fritz, Chessbase, etc. may have appeared, improved and changed dramatically since early nineties, but a chess player’s memorization capabilities, understanding of basic principles, tastes for certain structures  - they still follow the same laws and have the same limitations, so this book is still to be highly recommended for chess players rated 1700-2300.

10 steps to a Better Chess Opening Repertoire

1. Write it down, and then print it out. Begin by recording what you know already, and build on that.
2. Don’t be afraid that some parts of it are incomplete - realize that building an opening repertoire is a long term goal
3. As Mark Dvoretsky explained in Opening Preparation – openings you play should:
1. Fit your style (open vs. closed positions)
2. Fit your memory’s abilities. Relatively speaking, some openings require understanding of plans (e.g. Closed Sicilian), while others, such as King’s Indian defence require remembering a lot of theory as well
4. Don’t easily give up on lines that did not work out in a game, instead try to understand what particular mistake caused a defeat. That being said, if you keep having bad results in an opening – it’s worth reviewing whether it matches your style (see above).
5. It’s may sound obvious, but review it against books like MCO or NCO, computer databases, etc.
6. Pay attention to move orders and understand their implications. In “Slav Defence” Matthew Sadler talks about how this is often underestimated.
7. Understand how your openings are connected to typical middlegames and endgames. Shereshevsky’s Mastering the Endgame is a great reference on the Opening->Endgame connection.
8. Understand the opening’s history, and how ideas developed over time - see Kasparov’s “Revolution in the 70s”.
9. Before an important tournament - review the variations you will mainly rely on in this event (assuming your repertoire allows some variety in the first place). If you know in advance your opponent in next round – spend an hour to prepare for that specific game. Both will save you time over the board.
10. Review all games that you played in past, online and in over the board tournaments. Did you remember your own repertoire? Did the games reveal gaps in your coverage of theory?

Good luck! I am still working on step 1 for my own repertoire …

Opening repertoire – Write it Down!

In Jonathan Tisdall’s excellent book “Improve Your Chess Now” I came across a very practical recommendation that unfortunately took me so long to arrive at myself (or at least to follow with any consistency). The Wisdom and Advice chapter has a subsection called “Write it down” and I’ll quote it directly here:

If you have an interesting idea, write it down. If you analyse a position, write it down. If you decide on a basic opening repertoire, write it down. Recording your thoughts makes it easier to remember, and give you something to refer to when you eventually forget them. I find a often lose the notebook but it doesn’t hurt to try. And paper is still a more secure format than diskette, so I suppose the up-to-date advice would be: print it out [ and back it up – editor’s note.]

Many times I found myself over the board unsuccessfully trying to remember the theory, or trying to decide how to uniquely deviate from the same main lines that I never had a chance to study. These are the symptoms of the same root problems that I think affect many amateur players:

• A player never decides on a repertoire choice against a specific opening (even though it comes up once in every 30 blitz games and is an obvious problem)
  
• When a older game reveals a problem in one's knowledge of an opening, or in the opening itself, no action is taken between tournaments to "fix it" (because the steps involved are undefined).
  
• Because nothing is ever written down in one place, it is time consuming to review old theory knowledge before a tournament, or before a specific game.

Writing it down (i.e. enter into the computer, using today's language) is not going to solve all these problems, but it is the first step in the right direction. It will reveal what are the biggest gaps in your repertoire, and will be something you can always iterate upon and expand over the years. And yes, back it up!

PS. A while ago I already wrote about the attitude one should have towards opening preparation. And just last week I made a post about software tools to do exactly what Tisdall is talking about – printing out your opening repertoire.

Opening preparation – how to make a tree

I am not a big fan of opening preparation, it’s never been very easy for me. I enjoy studying the endgame a lot more. At the same time, I must admit that without proper opening knowledge – every game can potentially turn into a lot of suffering. In some openings you may get away with just knowing general ideas, but generally you can’t get away without knowing some precise variations.
Around the year 1998, I lost a speed chess game to a master. I lost it in an embarrassing manner, by getting my rook trapped on move 10 in the opening. I forgot the move order in exchange variation of Slav defence, and there was no return. After the game, the opponent looked at me with understanding, and gave me a very valuable advice (ok, one of the many he gave me). He said – “For every opening you play – you must have a tree. Does not matter how you do it, on paper, on computer, you must have it recorded somewhere”. Indeed, if you don’t bother to record it once, how likely are you ever going to REMEMBER thing?
Computers make it really easy to do this – you can create a database of games that looks like this (you can create it in Chessbase Light 6, and then load in Chessbase light 2007 for viewing – both are free).

In the body of the game, you enter the variations, and then if you do File-Print-Print Repertoire, you can get a nice printout like the screenshot below. It looks just like your own NCO! Store it under your pillow and that way you won’t forget your moves after 23…Rc4 in the Panov attack…

I recently wrote another post on opening preparation that has more to do with the psychological aspects of studying the opening.

Opening preparation - therapeutic?

A couple of years ago I was playing in an annual BC-Washington chess match. My game has gone into a long and tiring endgame, but as I was walking around, waiting for my opponent to move, I overheard US master Marcel Milat analyzing his game against Alfred Pechisker. Marcel won as Black, after gaining a nice position out of the opening. He uttered one phrase that stuck to my mind: "I find studying theory to be therapeutic." I thought to myself. "Holy Crap, how does he do that, why do I always have a hard time learning opening theory, deciding on which line to pick for my repertoire, and even worse - during the game desperately trying to remember which move to play on move 10, while my master opponent is walking around, wondering what the heck I am thinking about."

The word "therapeutic" however stuck to my mind; I was wondering how to be like Marcel and calmly study opening theory, the same way I analyze my games and endgames (which I actually do find relaxing and pleasant). Marcel was well-known for great opening preparation when he lived in BC, so I realized that proper attitude is key to success. Several problems seem to have plagued my opening preparation in the last few years (aggravated by rarely playing in regular chess tournaments):
1) Getting tired of old openings after a disappointing game put doubt on a certain line (a crushing quick defeat or unpleasant pawn structure that drags on until endgame)
2) As a solution - trying to switch to new openings, but not having enough practice to learn them, having similar problems (or even worse) in the new openings. This is a known syndrome (giving up on old lines too easily), that leads to 'jumping', but it is sometimes hard to distinguish from just wanting to learn new middlegame structures.
3) In openings that I rarely encountered -  not even having any line prepared at all ("so what do I play here on move 7")
Somewhere around summer of this year, I realized that I if I want to take my chess openings a bit more seriously, I need to change my approach, which now consists of several points:
1) To NOT study new openings in replacement of what I already have.
2) To review and organize (in a database) all the lines that I have ever played - making my repertoire more formalized and concrete, so that over the board I don't have to decide between 3 lines that I have played before. Part of my problem was that I forgot the stuff I actually did kind of know 5-10 years ago, so it was definitely useful to review those old lines. Another source of frustration was having database files scattered all over my hard drive, in different database formats (some in Chessbase, some in Chess Assistant), making it really hard to figure out where to add new lines, or update existing ones. That had to be fixed for sure. Somewhere (in a database, on paper, etc) - there must be a tree of moves that constitute my response to every possible move, in a style to similar to Nunn's Chess Openings.
3) Fill the gaps I have in my repertoire (identify them first, and gradually - prepare some lines in response to openings I never played...)
4) To plan my other study (practice games on ICC or book reading, etc) around that formalized repertoire.
Thinking about it again - with a more conservative approach, I see how studying openings can be "therapeutic", since I would have a goal that I can gradually move forward to - a manageable opening repertoire that fits into my memory, but also fits my style. As Alex Yermolinsky said in "The Road to Chess Improvement", "Man gotta know his limitations", and definitely with playing 10 tournament games a year, it's hard to master King's Indian, Sveshnikov Sicilian, and Marshall attack from scratch all at once, so you have to make some choices; or else the number of possibilities one has to remember on every move can easily get out of control ...

Book Review - Modern Chess Series, Part 1: Revolution in the 70's (Modern Chess) by Garry Kasparov

 

I have always found that learning a historic overview of an opening line is the most efficient way to understand the meaning of opening variations. In any major opening there is a myriad of deviations on every move, so knowing - why a certain line has become the main line is crucial to being able to remember the theory of any variation. In explaining the development of major modern opening systems lies the main value of this book, and Kasparov is in the best position to provide such an overview, since he himself was learning the opening for the first time throughout the seventies. Here are several random examples of what Kasparov brings to the table:

- detailed overview of the Hedgehog system

- historic development of the Sveshnikov varation in the Sicilian, but also a lot of information on the up to date theory

- explanation of how and why the Advance variation in the French defence became popular again

So Kasparov definitely succeeds in providing a truly useful book, and also a unique one in a way, since no one has done such an overview to the best of my knowledge. As for proving out that the seventies was the time of a particular revolution - that I don't think he truly convinced me in. The modern opening systems had already take current shape by then (that happened in 50s and 60s), and computers have not arrived yet the way they did in the nineties, so I still don't think that Sveshnikov variation or Hedgehog alone can be considered a revolution. In most other openings there was more of an evolution than revolution, so in my view Garry might as well have written a book title "Revolution in the 60s" or "Revolution in the 90s" (in fact I secretly hope that he will :))