The Chess Mind

I presented this position a couple of days ago:



The task was to figure out what White ought to do here. All his pieces seem ready to go, but he'll have to remove some defenders before he can win. If you haven't already worked on it, give it some more thought. When you're ready for the answer, click here.

Have a look:



White's position certainly looks impressive, but what can he do with it? Do your best to figure things out; my analysis will show up in a day or two (or three).

Evgeny Bareev has been among the world's best players for over a decade, and is best known for his positional chess. Still, he's not incapable of winning flashy games when the mood strikes, as you can see here.

Every now and then, I find myself interested in the Modern Benoni. It's a fun and dynamic opening, but it has its drawbacks, too. One well-known problem is the Taimanov Variation (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.f4 Bg7 8.Bb5+!), which has led many Benoni fans to either give it up or to try various move-order tricks, like 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6. If White plays 3.Nc3, Black will go for the Nimzo-Indian, but if White avoids it with 3.Nf3 Black plays 3...c5 and avoids the Taimanov. (This approach was pretty effective in the 1980s, when 4.Qc2 was unpopular and White players feared the so-called Hübner Variation against 4.e3. Since the early 90s, though, it hasn't worked as well.)

It's not as if the Taimanov Variation is fatal, but it's still nice to avoid it, and thus the search for move-order tricks continues. One idea I had one night, as I waited for sleep to overtake me, was 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 a6. White often (but not always) plays a4 in response to ...a6, so this looks at first like a very simple solution. On the other hand, there's the variation 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.f4 Bg7 8.e5, which is okay for Black - but just barely. Returning to my pre-sleep musing, I continued, after 6.e4 a6, with 7.f4 b5 8.e5. There was a little more mental analysis (on 8...Ng4, I think), but that was the end of it.

To my surprise, the position after 8.e5 showed up in a game from last night's Chess Today: Lalic-Laurent, from a recent open tournament in France. Black, a player with the very decent FIDE rating of 2399, chose 8...b4, and you can figure out the rest for yourself. (The mystery is why Laurent didn't figure it out in advance, since the line through 8.e5 isn't hard for a 6...a6 player to figure out. Even I did!)

The second game seems more successful innovating from the lower-rated player. In a sharp line of the Open Sicilian where White normally castles long, our hero castled short instead and still hacked his opponent to pieces. (Quite well, but it could have been even more beautiful - see the notes.)

Here are the games.