The Chess Mind

While browsing the ChessBase website a few minutes ago, I came across Andrew Martin's show blurb and found two items of interest.

First, an amusing puzzle:



It's White to move: what should the result be? (Don't submit the answer here!) It's pretty simple, but the idea is humorous.

Second, he mentions Normunds Miezis as a player with interesting opening ideas, and presents his 1.c4 e6 2.e4 d5 as an example (Miezis was White). That game turned into an Exchange French after 3.exd5 exd5 4.d4, which is underrated and can be played as a genuine winning try (it's the spineless 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 exd5 4.Bd3 that gets the bad press). But it's not as original as 3.cxd5 exd5 4.Qb3:



This line was invented by that crazy German theoretician Stefan Bücker, and was played for many years by your truly. I did a series of posts on this variation on my old blog, and I think I'll bring them over here shortly.

Calling this brilliant is a bit much; in fact, I'm not sure it's even a good move. It is unusual and clever though - have a look.



It's Black to move, and the plan that catches my eye is to try to bring the king in via the light squares, combined with ...b4 to keep White busy on both sides of the board. It looks good to me, but Malakhatko must have felt either that it wouldn't work or that his idea was even better, and came up with the spectacular 31...Qxg3!?

Sacrifices to free up passed pawns are common, but I think this is the first time I've seen this sort of sac: a whole queen is given up, and the net result isn't mate or even a gain of material. In fact, it even loses a pawn. So what's the idea? There are two. First, White's pawn formation is loosened up. Instead of the Black king having to run all the way to g2, aiming at the f-pawn, White's kingside pawns are now very loose, ripe apples waiting to fall from the tree. And second, Black's (new) queen has access to far more squares than her predecessor.

To see what came before, and how this adventure turned out, click here.