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Showing posts with label closed positions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label closed positions. Show all posts

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Outpost Creation as it Relates to pawn structure

It has been awhile, but I seem to remember Icelandic chess talent Agust Karlsson giving a lecture at Exeter Chess Club on the topic of establishing strong outposts for Knights in particular. One of the more secretive United Kingdom club members defined an outpost to be any fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh rank square that could not be attacked by enemy pawn.

In the following position, Egypt player player mary-wagih19, had played in a desultory(A Bisquier favorite term, he even told me once word originated from acrobat during a delay between rounds at a Goichberg tournament at Casino in Las Vegas) sequence of opening moves leaving his Queen side pieces uncoordinated with no hope of rapid development(a very difficult concept to define according to IM John Watson and GM Rowson)



So would you take the Queen on c5 with Rook or Pawn? The answer is easy if you think in terms of outpost creation! Any decision in chess has an attendant price which in this case would be a weakened Black pawn structure with the compensation being outposts at b6 and d6 squares. This harmonizes with Horse hopping to c4 to occupy either dark square. 

The stockfish software "believes" the pawn recapture is correct and I doubt children's chess teacher Amanda Mateer would disagree!

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Punish this Greedy Player

The chess champion and philosopher E. Lasker was not fond of greed and spoke of ways of punishing greed and avarice in life and chess.

Lordi, a 50 year old player at the Internet Chess Club, must not be familiar with Lasker's aversion for pawn grabbing out of the opening. With the White pieces, Lordi misplaces a Bishop at a3 and a Knight at a4 to win the Black c5 pawn. Dan Heisman would get nauseous and Rowson would excoriate the Indian player fot not "talking to the Horse and Prelate" before engaging in such unprincipled abuse of the Royal Game! You see this idea in the Nimzo Indian Defense, but the pawn chains are more locked up or closed.

So how do we punish this careless and materialistic Caissa sacrilege? The move is not  obvious, but it refutes White's poor understanding of material and piece coordination. Alex Yermolinsky student Rikkitikkitavi also still battles the addiction of pawn grabbing in opening and late middle game. The relatively slow move solution appears under the diagram.



Qe7!