The Chess Mind

The Stonewall is a pretty rare guest in master play, but in club play it, along with the Colle (also addressed in the video, but more briefly), is fairly popular. After all, it's easy to learn and it comes with a simple middlegame plan as well: pile up on the kingside and pray for mate. Of course, if it were that simple, then grandmasters would play this opening, but they don't.

How should Black meet this opening? As a public service to those who don't know what to do or are just sick of facing this opening, I offer some ideas in this video. After offering some fine points about the most accurate move orders, I present game in which Black first neutralizes White's Ne5 jump, succeeds in achieving his own knight leap with e4, and then utilizes his extra space on the queenside to win. It's a nice game I think you'll enjoy, and hopefully all Stonewallphobes will feel that their long nightmare is now over.

The video is available here, free and on-demand.

The game Hossain-Ganguly from the recently completed Commonwealth Championship was a 20 move draw, but it's a very interesting one that demands attention from Schliemann fans. Some mysteries remain, but my comments to this game should help quite a bit.

In tonight's issue of Chess Today, some games were included from a tournament in Argentina, and to my surprise Bent Larsen was included among the participants. Larsen, as many of you probably remember, was one of the world's best players in the 1960s and '70s and remained an elite player into the 80s as well. He's in his 70s now and doesn't play that much any more, but it's still nice to see him in action. Or rather, it was, until I saw what he was playing:

Round 1: Larsen (2461) - Dos Santos (2435): 1.g4.
Round 2: Mahia (2441) - Larsen (2461) 1.d4 c5 2.d5 e5 3.Nc3 h5.
Round 3: Larsen (2461) - Lemos (2479) 1.b4 e5 2.Bb2 Bxb4 3.Bxe5 Nf6 4.h4.
Round 4: Contin (2304) - Larsen (2461) 1.e4 a5
Round 5: Larsen (2461) - Liascovich (2435) 1.b4 e5 2.Bb2 Bxb4 3.Bxe5 Nf6 4.c3 Be7 5.h4 Nc6 6.Bh2.

Larsen was a great player, and in his prime he might very well have gone 5-0 against these opponents. But even so, why play like this? Why treat your opponent like he's a [donkey]? I can't understand why one of the all-time greats would do this - is it something special for a legend to humiliate a 2304 player by beating him with 1.e4 a5?

Happily, we won't get to find out. Contin DESTROYED Larsen in that game; in fact, all his opponents won. The author of today's Chess Today called Larsen's 0-5 start unfortunate, but I couldn't disagree more. It's one thing to play like this in blitz, goofing around out at the local club or on the internet (especially when one has "the hate"). But for a living legend to do this in a slow tournament? He can do whatever he wants to, but if he's going to play like this, I'm going to take delight in all the severe beatings over the board he gets.

As for those who want to invoke the 1.e4 a6 of Karpov-Miles, I think that gets it backward. Miles was an underdog with a horrible record against Karpov, and was doing something desperate to stop the negative trend. Larsen is in the bully role, not that of the gritty underdog. And if his goal was to avoid heavy theory, surely there were easier and sounder ways to do it than that!

Having been rather hard on Larsen in this post, let me say three things on his behalf. First, he is or at least was a great writer on the game, and if you can find his book of selected games at a non-lethal price, it's worth your time and money. The book is a terrific read. Second, he has always been somewhat avant-garde in his chess, though never anywhere near this far during his active days. But charitably, we can see his openings here as an extreme caricature of his normal chess. And third, at least he's not playing the Latvian!

(You can replay two of his thrashings here.)