The Chess Mind

It has been about a year and a half since I've discussed the variation that starts 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 Nxd4 11.Bxd4 b5 12.h4 a5 13.h5 (have a look here and work your way backward)



but a recent game from the Dutch Championships merits a quick update. After 13...a4 the key line, in my opinion, is 14.Bd5, but 14.Bxf6 attracts attention from time to time as well. Unfortunately for fans of the white side of this variation, the news is bad news: Stellwagen achieved less than nothing against Tiviakov, so it looks like 14.Bd5 is still crucial.

But see for yourself.

Has this blog gone geopolitical or only now caught up with breaking news from 1933? No and no. "Legal" in the title refers to the eponymous Frenchman's mating idea, not to the law: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Nc3 Bg4 4.Bc4 g6? 5.Nxe5 Bxd1?? 6.Bxf7+ Ke7 7.Nd5 is Legal's Mate.



That tactical idea sometimes occurs in near-beginner's games but almost never with serious players. But sometimes it does, and in the game Ahn-Ruck from the 2006/7 Belgian Team Championship, it arose in a theoretically significant setting. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5 5.Nb3 Bb6 6.Nc3 Nf6 7.Bg5 h6 8.Bh4 d6



we have a position that arose in the recent Candidates match between Rublevsky and Grischuk. Rublevsky played 9.Qe2, and 9.Bd3 is another important move. But how about 9.a4, as played once by GM Ilya Smirin, and by Ahn in this game? It's a logical idea, and it seems at least neutral after the normal 9...a6 (as played by Smirin's opponent).

You won't be surprised by now to learn that 9...Nxe4!! is the brilliant reply, but can you work out the win to the finish? (It is a queen, after all.) When you've done your best to calculate it to a satisfactory end, click here to see the game.

A couple of recent games from the French Team Championships caught my eye, especially when juxtaposed with each other. While only the first was a King's Indian Defense (the second was a Philidor), both featured the kingside pile-up by Black characteristic of the classical variation of that opening.

The first game, Bunzmann-Nataf, looked like a sure success for White. Almost all the kingside lines were closed, while White's queenside counterattack was starting to rip up the board. That's the danger for Black in this opening: while he's busy shoveling all his pieces to the kingside, his opponent can beat him to the punch by outflanking him on the queenside. Yet despite appearances, Nataf had things in hand, and a splendid sacrifice proved at least equality for Black. White erred in a complicated position, and Black was quickly winning.

The second game, Sebag-Kazhgaleyev, was a Philidor Defense, but it soon took on the characteristics of the KID. This time Black's kingside play looked more promising (though at the cost of a sacrificed queenside pawn), but appearances were again deceptive. White's defensive line was sufficient (though Black probably enjoyed dynamic equality), and while Black was delaying his kingside break, his happy opponent successfully infiltrated the queenside and won.

There are two morals. First, the joking one mentioned in the title: the pile-up is guaranteed to work, except when it doesn't. Great, you say: how do we tell the two cases apart? There probably isn't any easy answer to that, but one thing we can say - and this is our second moral - is that when the kingside gun is loaded, fire! Nataf did and succeeded, while Kazhgaleyev could have, but waited forever (more exactly, 6 or 7 moves...but that's practically an eternity in a race situation). Sometimes, even in race situations, it's right not to hurry. Sometimes there's a little tidying up to do, a little finessing that needs to be taken care of, a moment of prevention needed before landing the knockout punch. But hesitating in a race is usually a bad idea, and so it was here.

See for yourself.

We recently had a prolonged discussion on the site of the Philidor Counter-Gambit (start here and work your way backward), but that's just a (disreputable?) sideline in an opening that can count stars like Azmaiparashvili, Bacrot and Nisipeanu among its adherents. A new, excellent book on the great Frenchman's contribution is GM Christian Bauer's The Philidor Files, and you can read my review here. (Originally published in Chess Today.)