Minority Attack Versus a Breezy Queen Side Pawn Structure

 A nice guy named Randy Bonds told me about the minority attack in the exchange variation of the Queen's Gambit where White's a and b pawns advance to weaken the three black queen side pawns(two pawns versus three pawns sounds like a minority to me!!)

The following setup against something like a Kings Indian Defense reminded me of the Dave's Chess Studio mainstay. As you can see, White voluntarily moved his pawn to c5 just to be triple attacked!!

Since it does not look like Black will get any kind of initiative with the standard KI f5 etc, White can pile his Rooks up on the b,c, and d files in a target practice sort of fashion not particularly worried about being a pawn down.

Also "The awakening of the men in the rear" might apply here with the f3 Knight hopping to the ideal c4 square. 

Minority attack adherents include Fotzus Zachus, Richard Dickinson, Rod MacNevin, arnav kapur, Ellen Revell

The Engineering Correlation To Chess

One would expect there to be positive correlation between engineering ability and chess, but a person with the ICC name of Engineer does not support that view.

As you can in the diagrammed position a chess player named Engineer with the Black pieces prefers to let White slowly suffocate him. Black just moved his King's Knight back and forth waiting to be crushed with the inevitable checkmate!

White has a massive space advantage which Black appears to have desired. All of Black's minor pieces are cramped with no squares to land on.

I always thought of the engineering profession as one populated by independent, critical thinkers, but this internet chess club weak 1400 player casts some doubts.

Awakening of Those Men in The Rear

Many of the younger generation of chess players may not be familiar with the Magnum Opus of Aron Nimzovitch titled My System considered by many to be the most seminal book on chess ever written. His effort not only added invaluable pieces to chess theory, but had considerable literary value as the good doctor could really turn some phrases.

 One of my favorites was The awakening of the men in the rear which referred to cramped pieces that became active as pawns often sacrificially move forward. The following game played at the internet chess club involved an odd second move by a Japanese chess player named MerKavA. Against a Dutch defense our oriental friend plays 2. Qd3 which ended up subjecting his Queen to many attacks and allowed Black to fully develop and obtain a winning position.



Back to Nimzovitch. The Black Bishop, in the diagram you see, was stuck behind pawns at f5,e4,and d5. White's Rook had moved to a2 to guard weak c2 pawn. Black reacted by advancing his d5 pawn, sacrificially opening the the a2-g8 diagonal and attacking the a2 Rook.

All this makes the e6 Bishop the fellow who was awakened from his slumber to snap off the inattentive tower on a2.