The Chess Mind

It's not as bad as 2.Ba6, but 2.Qh5 against the double-king pawn isn't exactly good, either. Played by generations of schoolchildren hoping for the four-move mate, and "popularized" (ha ha) by Indiana father-and-son experts Bernie Parham (sr. and jr.), American GM Hikaru Nakamura has taken it out for the occasional spin this past year, sometimes even in serious games. (Actually, to remove the scare quotes around "popularized", I've heard it claimed that Nakamura was told about the line by (former) Indiana master Jason Doss, whose own familiarity with 2.Qh5? stemmed from the Parhams.)

In an earlier post, I proposed 2...Nf6 as the remedy, calling White's bluff. White grabs the pawn, but Black gets plenty of tempi in return. Computer analysis, my past experience and even a brutal Nakamura-Anonymous blitz game all confirmed its strength. Black wasn't just in good shape; I had a difficult time keeping Black's edge down to a clear advantage!

That's where we left off. I haven't noticed any subsequent Nakamura games in this variation where his opponents tried 2...Nf6 (and he seems to have given up the line in blitz, though he might just be waiting for people to forget about it before bringing it out again), and no one challenged the specifics of my analysis. So there's nothing left but for me to try to fix 2.Qh5? on my own.

So, one fine day I'm musing about the variation, and the Center Counter comes to mind: 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5. The queen's moving around, sure, but it's not really that horrible on a5, and it's pretty tough for White to prove a meaningful advantage against this opening. Likewise, 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Qxd4 Nc6 4.Qa4 is a viable alternative to the usual 4.Qe3 in the Center Game. With those ideas in mind, I produced the obvious application 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5? Nf6 3.Qxe5+ Be7 4.Qd4(!) Nc6 5.Qa4.

In comparison with the Center Game variation, Black has already achieved ...Nf6 and ...Be7, but (a) Be7 doesn't seem like much of an achievement, while (b) in return for Black's two (one and a half?) extra tempi, White is a pawn up!

Nevertheless, these tempi matter, and while I don't see as clear a path to a big advantage for Black as I did in the earlier variations, it's still White who must do the scrambling.

Have a look, here.

Philidor's Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6) has long been a backwater of chess theory: ask the average player to name all the games in that opening they can think of, and their only answer is likely to be the Morphy vs. Count & Duke game. This is undoubtedly unfair, as many players, especially super-GM Etienne Bacrot, have really souped up the theory, proving it to be a legitimate opening.

That said, amateur interpretations of the Philidor don't often work out quite so well, and I've attached a recent case in point, from the recently completed Cappelle la Grande open tournament (won by Alexander Moiseenko with 7.5/9). Black essayed the iffy Philidor Counter-Gambit (3.d4 f5), and although White "fell for" one of Black's allegedly tricky lines, it didn't turn out so well.

Consider this your 2006 reminder to avoid junk openings.

One interesting, slightly underpublicized variation of the Dragon begins 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6 5.Nc3 Bg7 6.Be3 Nf6 7.Bc4 O-O 8.Bb3 d6 9.f3 Bd7 10.Qd2. Black can transpose into main line Dragon variations with 10...Rc8 11.O-O-O Ne5, but the game will maintain its distinctive Accelerated Dragon if Black chooses 10...Nxd4 instead. After 11.Bxd4 b5 12.h4 a5 13.h5, we reach a critical position:



I have already discussed this position in three posts (in chronological order, see here, here and here; the first two are from my previous blog), and my preference to date has been for White.

Nevertheless, theory moves on, and I've attached a recent game in which the lower-rated Black player braved this line and won anyway. White didn't play what I had previously considered the best move (which may or may not be significant), but it's an interesting game nonetheless. I've also included a game in a slightly different but closely related variation. In this second game, White commits to castling queenside sooner than usual, which should favor Black, at least in theory. White won the game, but in neither case should we rush to assume a reliable link between the opening's evaluation and the result.

Without further ado, here are the games.

It's an ugly-looking move, but other moves that violated the aesthetic sensibilities of a given generation have become wholly accepted, even taken as obviously sound and reasonable. (Examples: the Sveshnikov Sicilian and the Chebanenko Slav.) Vadim Zvjaginsev trotted it out three times in the Russian Championship at the end of 2005, with mixed results (see here, for example), and it seemed that interest in 1.e4 c5 2.Na3, then a novelty, had already peaked and run its course.

But maybe not! At the Moscow Superblitz tournament in January, the line was tried no less than nine times - including twice by Morozevich and thrice by Svidler. That said, the line bombed: +3 -5 =1. It's probably premature to consider it dead and buried, though, so I invite curious souls to have a look at the games, which I've attached here. (The games are from Chess Today-1917, and have plenty of errors in the notation, as often happens with attempts to transcribe blitz games.)