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Monday, June 16, 2014

Blockade Benoni

BFavre of the ICC loves playing the Blockade Benoni where Black constructs a pawn triangle with pawns at the c5,d6,e5 squares.  In the position you see White did not place a pawn on c4 so he could route his Knight from a3 to to the c4 square.



Also Black has just placed his Queen on c7 and with White to move it is very tempting to play the clearance sacrifice e5 which would win a piece if the d7 knight captures at e5.

Do you see why? After Bishop captures knight and the thrust d6, Black is losing a piece owing to Bishop takes pawn check at h7. However since Black can capture at e5 with the d6 pawn, White should abstain from from the diagonal opening pawn advance.

Moving the e2 Horse to either c3 or g3 ensure the first player of a lasting initiative.



1 comment:

  1. Fischer beat Spassky with this opening by allowing a weakening of his kingside which is discredited these days. Read Bill Wall's comment about Fischer's passing to get some insight on the incredibly inflated egos that infect chess players.

    Wall was happy to have some affirmation that Fischer knew who he was!!

    Bobby Fischer was 12 years older than me, so his exploits were always on my mind. When he died I suddenly wanted to quit chess. I think it's because I always wanted to have some kind of conversation with Bobby. The closest I came is a chess master who traveled to Iceland and talked to Bobby, and the chess master said that Bobby knew about me. I saw Bobby play two Candidate matches against Larsen in Denver as a teen. When Bobby beat Spassky I was a busboy/dishwasher/waiter at Villae Inn, and it made the front page of the Rocky Mountain news. I heard Bobby's deep New York accent when he postmortemed with Bent.

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