Winning Pawn Structures: Attacking f7 with the IQP: Part 2

In this blog, I am going to finish out the games displaying the IQP's attacking potential against f7/f2 with a couple more games from Baburin's Winning Pawn Structures. We ended last time with Botvinnik's classic game featuring a knight sacrifice on f7 with the idea of blasting away Black's center and exposing his king. Today's games were clearly inspired by Botvinnik's outstanding idea.

If you missed my first blog, you can check out it the f4-f5 plan and the beginning of the f7 knight sac HERE.

Just as before, I'm embedding YouTube videos with coverage of the analysis provided here. Make sure to check out MY CHANNEL for tons of Live Blitz as well as other instructional material.

You could consider our first game as a twin of Botvinnik's masterpiece against Batuyev, and was played by none other than Baburin himself in a display that leaves us no doubt that he is the right man to be writing about the IQP.

Let's check it out:

A really fine game that shows how difficult it can be for Black to handle his king after the e6/f7 pawn couple go missing even if there isn't the same obviously devastating attack from Botvinnik's game. Our next game was played by the legendary GM Taimanov and features a slightly less characteristic placement of White's army. However, if you look closely, you'll see that the key features are all there just as in the Botvinnik and Baburin game.

It was pretty amazing to see how Black's seemingly compact army was completely unable to defend against Taimanov's assault on e6 and f7. Did you notice that despite his knight being on f4 and dark square bishop being on b2, that all the key features were in place just as in our two previous examples?

For sake of completeness let's name them:

• Knight posted on e5

• Bishop posted on c4

• Queen on the e-file

• Black Rook on c8

• Black bishop off the c8/h3 diagonal

Perhaps not every factor is necessary for the success of the sacrifice, so if you see a couple of the these factors on the boards, your senses should start to tingle that there may be a sacrifice possible on f7.

These games finish out Baburin's coverage of the direct assaults on f7/f2 but worry not! We're moving on to Rook lifts and more direct kingside attacks next. Be sure to ADD ME as a friend so that you'll be notified when I publish my next blog.

As always, thanks for reading! And leave a comment. I love to hear from you.