Opening Principles

Prospect opened the 2012-2013 season yesterday with a 44.5-23.5 victory over Rolling Meadows

Our fifth board asked me to comment on his opening play so I'll start with some basic opening principles.  The three main goals in the opening are (1) activating forces, i.e., development, (2) controlling the center, and (3) finding a safe place for the king, usually by castling.   As important as it is for a player to achieve these goals, he should never forget that his opponent has the exact same goals and he should always be on the lookout for moves that hinder his opponent in achieving his goals.

The game began 1.e4 d5.

  

This is known as the Scandanavian Defense.  It is not terribly popular among masters, but it is a sound response to 1.e4.  White then played 2.Nc3?!.

This move does two good things: (1) it develops a piece and (2) it protects the pawn on e4.  It has one big drawback though:  the White knight is not secure on c3.  This gives Black the opportunity to play a move that not only furthers his own opening goals, but also hinders White's, 2...d4!  drives away the White knight and gives Black more space in the center.  A perfectly natural sequence might be 2...d4 3.Nce2 Nc6 4.Nf3 e5.

Although White has moved two knights and Black has only moved one, I would assess Black's development as better at this point because he has good spots immediately available for all his minor pieces whereas neither of White's bishops can move yet.   The point to remember is that a move that achieves an opening goal may be good, but one that achieves that goal while hindering the opposition from achieving his goal is even better.  A move that doesn't achieve any opening goals may even be good if it forces the opposition to use several moves to achieve his.

Instead of 2...d4!, Black played 2...Nf6?!, which suffers the same drawbacks as 2.Nc3.

However, White did not take advantage of the opportunity to gain time and space with 3.e5 and instead played.  3.Bd3?

This is a move that I hate to see, a player using his bishop to protect one of his central pawns before the other central pawn had moved.  The reasons I hate this are because it has a bishop doing a job that could be just as well done by a pawn and it hinders the development of the other bishop.  There is rarely a good reason to develop a bishop this way.  In this particular position, it's not a terrible blunder, but it's awkward.  A reasonable response might have been 3...dxe4 4.Bxe4 Nxe4 5.Nxe4 Nc6.

The players are equally developed and have about the same control of the center but Black has the two bishops in an open position which is a slight advantage.  Instead, the game went 3...e5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.0-0 Bc5 6.exd5 Nxd5 7.Be4 Be6.

At this point, I would call the position fairly even.  Black has followed sound opening principles in his development, but he has neglected the opportunity to hinder his opponent's pursuit of his opening goals.

Knights in the Endgame

Knight v. Pawns

A basic idea in an ending with a knight against pawns is that the player with the knight looks for opportunities to force the pawns to move onto squares where they are vulnerable to forks.   Here is an example from a game I played last Saturday in Evanston.  White can draw this position but my opponent only had about a minute left on his clock and those forky things that knights do can be very difficult to visualize when time is running low.

 My opponent played 51.Ka6?? which allowed me to win by driving the e-pawn forward with  51...Nd3! 52. e6 Nc5+ 53. Ka7 Nxe6 and Black had no trouble rounding up the last two pawns.  However, White could still have drawn 51.a4! Ne6 52. b4 Nc7 53. b5+ Kc5 54. Kb7 Ne6 55. Ka6 Nc7+.

Black can do nothing because his king must guard the pawn and his knight has to keep the White king off a6 lest he trade off Black's last pawn by playing a5.

Here's a tricky one from the 1956 Candidates Tournament.  Black has little chance to save his own pawns, but if he can win either the White g-pawn or h-pawn and sacrifice the knight for the other one, his king can blockade the a-pawns.  I stared at it for about an hour recently without coming up with the correct drawing plan for Black, but I don't feel so bad as Efim Geller didn't come up with the right move against Tigran Petrosian either and lost after 51...Nb6 52.a5 Na8.

The correct plan is 51... Nc5+! 52. Kf7 Kb7 53. Kxg7 Ne4 54. Kxh7 Nd2!.

Black is threatening to win one of the pawns with 55...Nf1 and none of White's pawn moves are satisfactory.  If 55.g4 Nf3 56.h3 Ng5+.  If 55.h4 Ne4 56.g4 Nf6+.  If 55.h3 Ne4 56.g4 Ng5+.

Knights v. Bishops

An interesting thing about the three round Evanston tournament is that I got two positions in which I had knight, rook, and five pawns with the Black pieces against White's bishop, rook and five pawns.  The results were exactly opposite, however, which may have something to do with the fact that one of my opponents was rated 2200 and the other was rated 1739.

In the first round, I had the kind of position that a knight loves.  White's bishop is confined by the Black knight and his own pawns.  Nevertheless it took some imagination to convert the advantage.   Here I played 32...h4! 33. Rxe5 h3+ 34.Kg3 (If 34.Kg1 Nf3+ wins the rook) 34...Rxf1 and the first position in the post was eventually reached.

In the third round, I had the kind of position that the knight loathes.  Here the bishop has complete freedom of movement and the Black pawns on light squares are easy targets.  After 36.Rd5 b4 37.Ra5 bxa3 38.bxa3, White can pick off the a-pawn at his leisure.

RIP Jon Burgess

National Master Jon Burgess took his own life last weekend in the garage of his home near Prospect High School. He is survived by his wife and young son. I have known Jon since he moved to the United States from England nearly a decade ago. I played him several times, but never managed better than a draw. I also played on a couple of teams with Jon. As both an opponent and a teammate he was generous and supportive.

I last saw Jon at the Chicago Open chess tournament in May. He and Michael Auger were going over a game they had just played in the U2300 section. It was a wild tactical battle and they were having great fun exploring the possibilities. After they were done, Jon asked me if I wanted to go over any of my games with him. I wish I had taken him up on his offer.

I never would have guessed that Jon suffered from depression, but sometimes its hard to tell. It saddens me that he didn't know how much fun it could be to hang around with him.

Chess players are prone to see life as a chess game, but it's important not to forget the differences:

• In life, all resignations are premature.
• In life, it's never a bad idea to play a couple more moves just to see what happens.
• In life, no matter how overwhelming the attack may seem, there is always a chance to turn things around.
• In life, even if you feel like all your pieces have been captured, there is probably a pawn somewhere that you haven't noticed.

I wish that Jon had played out the position a little longer.

Mike Monsen Picking Up Some Rating Points

It's great to see Prospect's 2nd Board playing some chess this summer.  Mike has played in three tournaments this summer raising his rating from 1147 to 1282.  His best result came at the Evanston Tri Level on July 14th where he won two, lost one, and drew one against opponents who out rated him by an average of more than 400 points.

Here is his last round draw from the Chicago Class Championship.

Hart v Moskwa, the Rematch, 1/2-1/2.

Robert and I played in Yuri Shulman's G45 tournament at the Barbara Rose Elementary School in South Barrington on Saturday.  Despite offering free entries to anyone rated over 1600, Robert and I were the only takers.  However, the MSL was well represented with Michael Feldman from Fremd as well as Harrison Choi, Jiby Varghese, and Jake Albertson from Hoffman Estates.  Going into the fourth last round, Robert, Harrison, and I all had three points and I thought Robert might get the chance to avenge his loss to Harrison at the MSL Tournament last January, but instead he got another crack at me, albeit again with the Black pieces.

I opened with my usual 1.c4 and Robert replied with the much less usual 1...b6.  We were quickly out of book and forced to rely on our wits.  I felt that I had the better position for much of the game, but I was unable to figure out any way to capitalize on my space advantage and I offered a draw as my clock went under five minutes.

Chicago Open

I won two games, lost one, and drew four to finish 4-3 in the U2100 section at the Chicago Open over the Memorial Day weekend.  My rating slipped four points to 2007.  Not quite as good as last years 5.5-1.5 finish that pushed my rating up to 2068, but it was nonetheless a pleasant weekend.  Two MSL alumni had strong results in U2300.  Barrington's Zach Kasiurak cracked the master level at 2201 by going 5-2 and Buffalo Grove's Matt Wilber upped his rating to 2183 by going 4.5-2.5.

I was mildly pleased with my performance in the three rook endings that I played, drawing the two when I was a pawn behind and winning the one where I was a pawn ahead.  In fact, I went the entire tournament without badly screwing up an ending which encourages me greatly.  I even managed to generate winning chances in one of the rook ending where I was down a pawn.


After frittering away a strong middle game with some ill conceived tactics, I found myself down a pawn as White in the following position. 

Question:  Should White restore material equality with 38.Rxe5?

Hint: The key to rook endings is keeping the rook active.

Answer:  No.  Superior rook activity is often worth a pawn in these endings.  After 38.Rxe5?!, Black can activate her rook with 38...Rb6 putting it in optimal position to support the advance of her pawn.  White would then be forced to use deactivate his rook by maneuvering it to b2 to blockade the pawn.  On the other hand, after 38.Rb7 Rc5 39.Kg4, White's rook prevents the advance of the b-pawn, keeps an eye on the Black king, and forces the Black rook into the passive task of defending its pawns from the side.

White was eventually able to recover the pawn under more favorable circumstances and could even have gone up by a pawn however Black was able to activate her king and rook to hold the draw.

A Rook Ending from the Denker

Here's a position from Moskwa v. Kogen that illustrates the differences between rook endings and queen endings discussed in the last post.

Robert's pawn is nearer to queening but that's not nearly as big an advantage in a rook ending because the Black rook will sacrifice itself for the new queen after which the White rook won't be able to handle the Black king and connected pawns alone and may be forced to sacrifice itself in return.  A queen could handle the Black king and pawns with ease.

The game went 39.Rc8 Rd3 40.Ke6 b3 41.d7 a4 42.d8=Q+ Rxd8 43.Rxd8 Kc5 and in order to draw White will have to hustle his king over to help with the defense and sacrifice his rook at the right moment.  On the other hand, 39.e5! would have won after 39....Rd3 40.e6 Rd5+ 41.Ke4 Rxd6 42.e7 42.Rxe7 42.Rxe7  because the White king is close enough to assist the rook before the Black pawns advance too far.