Monday, January 26, 2009

Ripping Open Castled Pawn Formation

Tactics

I wasn't hot today. I work a shift schedule and when I work the day shift, I lose lots of sleep. So today I was trying to stay awake while on ChessTempo. I managed to not drop below 1800.

Red Hot Pawn

I was able to make my moves today. I've got one game up to move 42. The rest have 14 and below moves in them. I drew one game today.

Logical Chess

I worked on game 12 this evening. Another theme in this book, so far, is about not disrupting your castled pawn formation. If you do, then your opponent can find ways to rip it open. The best defense against someone ripping open your pawn formation on your castled king is to create action in the center.

In game 12, White fails to make anything happen in the center. As a result, Black is able to infiltrate White's territory and rip open the pawn structure on the castled king.

White's mistake was h3 after Black placed his bishop on g4.

That's all for today.

4 comments:

  1. The question here is also if it's good to exchange the bishop for the knight just to win the h3-pawn.

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  2. As my diagram states, when Black wins that h3 pawn, his queen is planted in that formidable spot the remainder of the contest. White was never able to dislodge her. So, yes, it was good to exchange the knight for the bishop so that he could plant her on h3.

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  3. Strange since after ... Bxf3, Bxf3 Qxh3, Bg2 and the Queen has to go.

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  4. White's next move was bxc6 ... he wanted to win back the pawn that Black just took. If after 13. Bg2 then Qd7 and Black wins the pawn and has ripped open the castled pawn formation. Now whether White should have given up the pawn and dislodged the queen ... perhaps that is what he should have done.

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