McDonald Chess Success: Planning After the Opening

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84994-097-9
Verlag: Batsford
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

There are plenty of chess books that cover openings, but not so many that tell you what to do next. Every player has encountered problems once the opening phase of the game has ended, and this book provides solutions. Renowned chess author Neil McDonald guides you through a selection of over 40 recent instructive and entertaining Grandmaster games, all of which illustrate how sound planning and a clear head can help you through that crucial post-opening phase.

Neil McDonald is an International Grandmaster, prolific chess author and trainer. He is noted both for the lucidity of his writing as well as his extensive theoretical knowledge.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mcdonald, Neil

Leseproben

Delaying the moment of tactical truth

Rudolf Spielmann

Gerald Abrahams

Arthur Schopenhauer

Almost all chess games end in a manner that requires us to show some tactical ability, whether it is co-ordinating the pieces to mate in two moves or counting the number of moves to see who would queen first in a pawn race if we swapped off queens. So it’s good to train ourselves for that phase – there would be no point getting the positions of an Alekhine if we can’t find his combinations!

The prettiest move in this book is perhaps the queen sacrifice 9 … xe4!! in Game Four.

And yet it required no strategic planning – Ruck was simply developing his pieces in honest fashion like a million players before him when ‘like a bolt from the blue’ the chance to sacrifice his queen appeared. He had to show tactical alertness and courage to grasp the opportunity; but before that he wasn’t required to do anything special at all. The game went straight from the opening to a mating attack with nothing in between.

And it is this ‘in between phase’ that in the vast majority of games makes all the difference. From a strategic point of view, Galliamova-Dvoirys is a better game than Ahn-Ruck, because the victor is required to lay the groundwork of the final attack with a positional pawn sacrifice; while better still is Nakamura-Volokitin, as it took interlocked manoeuvres on both wings and in the centre to make Black’s direct attack on the white king viable.

Let’s consider the three quotations given above. Rudolf Spielmann is conceding that he doesn’t have the same skill in the manoeuvring phase preparatory to an attack as Alekhine. He would see 9 … xe4!! in a flash if given the chance, and handle the king hunt with aplomb, perhaps finding the mate that Ruck missed. But as we said above, normally you have to manoeuvre skillfully before such an opportunity arises, and here Alekhine takes the cigar.

Gerald Abrahams was a strong British amateur at his best in the 1930s. He was an attacking player in the mould of Spielmann with an eye for a spectacular finish, and rather proud of it too: when he saw another player make a fine combination he was wont to exclaim ‘played like Abrahams!’

In essence, Abrahams is making the same point as Spielmann. He can ‘play like Abrahams’ when there is ‘something to do’: that is attack or make combinations. But what to do the rest of the time?

I don’t know if Schopenhauer played chess, but I think his words neatly sum up the situation. It might be hard to find combinations, but at least we all have a chance to find a move like 9 … xe4!! or 12 … b3+! in the Dvoirys game if only we look deeply enough. Perhaps only talent can work out the combination to its conclusion (‘hit the target’) but we all have a chance to find it.

Whereas what are we meant to be doing in the strategic phase prior to the attack? Here it takes a genius to hit the target that no one else can see. It is no wonder that all the ancient chess masters excelled at tactics but were weak at strategy. It took a long line of genii – Philidor, Steinitz, Rubinstein, Capablanca and so on to raise the level of positional play of each generation.

Thanks to the efforts of these players, the ‘invisible target’ has been revealed to us. In this chapter, I wish to look at blocked centres, in which the emphasis is on deep and concealed manoeuvring. I have focused on the d5/e4 versus d6/e5 structure that typically arises in the King’s Indian, and also occurs in a mainline of the Ruy Lopez.

But first of all, let’s observe a genuine positional genius at work in the mirror image d4/e5 versus d5/e6 pawn structure.

Game 10
A.Karpov
Zhu Chen
Dubai 2002

In Kotov describes his frustration when he tried to follow the advice of Romanovsky that in every game we ought to have a single basic plan:

‘I tried to start playing in a planned fashion, working out a plan right after the opening to take me into the ending, but … I got precisely nowhere! I would envisage a long systematic siege of my opponent’s pawn at a6 but suddenly he would distract me completely by tactical complications along the f-file.’

After these failed attempts, Kotov came to the conclusion that a from the first move to the last move wasn’t required: instead a series of was needed. Each little plan should follow on from the previous plan, and once it is achieved, the player should set his or her sights on the next strategic objective. Alternatively if the situation changed so that the little plan was rendered inappropriate, it should be immediately aborted in favour of a more appropriate plan.

Kotov also asserts that only in completely one sided games is it possible for a player to carry out a consistent winning scheme from the beginning of the game until its end: in such cases, the loser had to be either a very weak player or a strong player having a very bad day at the office.

Kotov is right to protest about claims that a plan can be devised after 1 d4 and carried on until ‘1-0, 64 moves’.

However, he is surely going too far in the other direction. For if there is no ‘higher’ strategic demand in the position than devising one little plan after another, how would you know what string of little strategic plans you should be knitting together in order to eventually win the game? If you put a rook on an open file, a knight on an outpost square, and give your opponent doubled pawns, that’s three worthy little plans, but do they combine together to push your position in the correct direction?

Certainly ‘little’ plans are needed, but so is a ‘grand’ plan. Although the idea of one plan per game is rightly rejected, there is often a sense of inevitability when you play through a game by Kramnik or one of the other all time greats. Once the pawn structure has clarified in the early middlegame, the World Champion is often relentless in the exploitation of small advantages. For example, a recurring theme of his games as White is the creation of a passed pawn. In his book there are numerous examples of the opponent’s pawn structure being systematically bludgeoned until it yields him a passed pawn. A long chapter is called ‘breakthrough’.

On the day of the last round of the Wijk aan Zee 2007 tournament I discussed with some friends the likely results. Kramnik was just behind the leaders and playing White so he would clearly make a big effort to win.

His opponent, the Dutch Grandmaster Van Wely, always plays the Grunfeld. Therefore I predicted ‘Kramnik will create a passed pawn in the centre, push it up the board and win’. Kramnik always seems well on the road to victory once he has a passed pawn in the Grunfeld, even if the verdict of theory is that it’s ‘unclear’. Take a look at Kramnik-Svidler in his book for example.

It seems to me that Van Wely also knew ‘the way the wind blows’ in the Grunfeld, as he actually played the Slav Variation. So I was wrong in my prediction of the opening, and also wrong about Kramnik queening a passed pawn. But here is the last move of the game:

Kramnik – Van Wely
Wijk aan Zee 2007

Kramnik played 40 e5! cutting out the threat to h2 from the black queen and introducing the threat of 41 xh7 mate.

The neatest way of winning after 40 … cc7 (and there are many) might be 41 f6+ hg7 42 h4+ g8 43 h7+! (clearing the way for the rook check) 43 … xh7 44 d8+ f7 (hopeless is 44 … xd8 45 xd8+) 45 f6 mate.

So you see, the passed pawn did make Van Wely resign …

Kotov says that one-sided games with a clear strategic plan devised in the early middlegame and resulting in a seemingly effortless victory indicate one player was in very poor form – but all I can say is, if that’s the case then Karpov must have been very lucky throughout his entire career, as top Grandmasters always seemed to play badly against him!

I think Karpov’s play in the present game shows the necessary harmony between a ‘grand’ plan and ‘small strategic operations’. Contrary to Kotov’s experience with a fruitless attempt at a ‘long systematic siege of the a6 pawn’ Karpov really does get a lot of benefit through a long siege of the h6 pawn. Of course it helped him a great deal that the centre pawn structure was stable.

So let’s finally look at Karpov-Zhu Chen.

The Opening to the game was a Hippopotamus Defence:

1 d4 b6 2 e4 b7 3 d2 e6 4 c3 g6 5 d3 g7 6 gf3 e7 7 e2 d6 8 0-0 a6 9 e5 d7 10 e1 d5 11 f1

Here we have a blocked d4/e5 versus d5/e6 pawn structure characteristic of the French Defence.

11 … c5

Black’s pawn methodically attacks the key centre point…

12 h3

… and Karpov languidly pushes his h-pawn one square. This looks like the namby-pamby sort of move that players make when they can’t find a plan. However, it gradually becomes clear that the ex-World Champion isn’t just taking a break from mental effort.

12 … c6

The black...