Following yesterday’s sidetrack onto the Scandinavian with 2.e5, today I am returning to the game (from the 2008 Nottingham Congress) that I’ve already started looking at. I’ve previously looked at it in my post entitled The The London System Opening, and I listed it in full in the Comedy of Errors but an Eventful Draw post.
Looking back on my games, I am frequently surprised by the things that troubled me over the board (as well as the obvious things that I miss). This is a case in point. After the moves
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 c5 3.Bf4 e6 4.e3 b6 5.Bd3 Bb7 6.Nbd2 Be7
I now played 7.h3 (see first diagram)
as insurance for the bishop against …Nh5, but was this really necessary? In hindsight it looks like a waste of time. There followed
7.h3 0-0 8.c3 d5 9.Qe2 Ne4 10.0-0-0 Nd7 11.h4 Qc8 reaching the (second) diagrammed position.
Note in passing I played 11.h4, which having played 7.h3 took two moves to play rather than one. However, this I feel was a minor error, and it is the position after 11…Qc8 I am really interested in discussing.
I saw the possible sacrifice on c3 coming up – say white goes for the attack with 12.Ng5, black continues 12…cxd4 13.exd4 Nxc3 14.bxc3 Qxc3+. Now I saw 15.Kb1 15…Ba3 16.Nb3 a5 and got worried, and so moved my king to one side. However, white can make a fool of back’s attack by playing 17.Rh3!
This (see third diagram - after 17.Rh3!) threatens Bh7+ (winning the black queen), and black must go into reverse while white still has a good attacking position.
The problem here was my inability to analyse variations. If I am to fix this problem, I think I just need to find games in books where the annotator has supplied lots of analysis, analyse the position myself, and then compare my results with those of the annotator. As far as I know this is actually known as a method of improving.
More specifically, it came down to my inability to find the resources available to me only three moves into analysing. Being able to see the straightforward line – i.e. the knight sacrifice on c3 followed by the introduction of black’s queen and dark squared bishop - is not enough.
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i in joyed your examples and was wondering if their was and easy way to learn good ways to beat the compition
I’m glad you enjoyed the examples. To be honest I’m not sure what you mean by and “easy way to learn good ways to beat the competition” ? If you’re asking about improving your chess, I aim to write an article about this soon.