The Chess Mind

At the local club tonight, one of the players handed me the scoresheet from a game he played on Tuesday. I didn't look too much at the game as a whole, but one position grabbed my attention in a sustained way, and I spent 20-30 minutes analyzing it. This was the position in the game after White's 12th move:



I don't recall what Black actually did, but it wasn't 12...f4. I haven't checked any of my analysis with the computer - and I'm not going to, either, until I've really spent a lot of time on it - and I in turn won't "contaminate" your thinking by presenting it. So chew on the position for a while (but no analytical comments yet, please), and in a few days we'll discuss it.