One way to open lines towards his kingside is 8...d4. You're right about a6 being limp. It's WAY too passive. Have a look at Houdini's top ten moves in the position. No sign of a6.
you do have a sizeable advantage though and although opposite side castling when your opponent launches his pawns can be intimidating, allowing pawn to g5 has to be a mistake. I think the counter attack in the centre is the way to go as advice for such positions usually states. Good Luck.
One way to open lines towards his kingside is 8...d4. You're right about a6 being limp. It's WAY too passive.
I think the counter attack in the centre is the way to go as advice for such positions usually states. Good Luck.
Thanks Shero - that's a principle I didn't really think about, counter-attacking in the Centre. I was too preoccupied with thinking about how to attack on the queenside, I didn't think about how to make better use of my central control. Looking at some of those lines, 8.d4 does indeed look much much better. All part of a learning curve!
If your opponent fianchettos queenside, you have no particular reason to play Be7 (no pin to break)--it's not a bad move if you have a plan, but it's part of why you had trouble finding one. After Bd6 (and maybe Qc7), you've prepared e5, and you can really start taking advantage of your extra space--and develop the queen's bishop. That's the big thing, once you've pushed your d and c pawns out there, it's usually a good idea to fight for the chance to line the e-pawn up next to them. Controlling the center squares you occupy is as important as controlling the other center squares.
For all that, your opening was fine, really, I just wanted to address the "plan" question. The big problem was your reaction to the g-pawn thrust. Even a simple h6 might have been in order there. If you'd swung the knight to d7, you could have put him on b6 to pressure the queenside. After f4, e5 would've netted you the g-pawn, one way or another. Basically, you let your opponent march his kingside pawns right down your king's throat without addressing the pawnstorm at all, even in your annotations. Even your counterattack on the queenside might have worked had you not suddenly switched your thoughts to defending your king several moves too late. I would say as a planning point, never ignore advanced knight-pawns, they have a way of wreaking havoc, especially aimed at your castled king.
If your opponent fianchettos queenside, you have no particular reason to play Be7 (no pin to break)--it's not a bad move if you have a plan, but it's part of why you had trouble finding one. After Bd6 (and maybe Qc7), you've prepared e5, and you can really start taking advantage of your extra space--and develop the queen's bishop.
Thanks dodgecharger1968 - that's a useful piece of advice, which makes a lot of sense to me. As for ignoring the advancing pawns, that was clearly lame from my side, but hopefully next time I can come up with a better plan a bit earlier so that I can forestall that kind of thing. Thanks for taking the time to look.
Dear chess.com users one and all,
I just wrote a blog going into some detail about my thoughts as I played a game recently, where I was very frustrated at my inability to plan well, ultimately leading to a loss because I played without direction. The blog entry is here: http://www.chess.com/blog/john4000/planning-frustration
I'd be very grateful if anyone would take a look and offer up any suggestions for how I could have better assessed the situation. I'm pretty clear about where I went wrong, but what I'm more interested in is how could I have made the RIGHT moves instead?
Any thoughts very welcome.
John