The English Opening by GM Magesh and GM Arun
It is time to get back to the English opening today. We will study one of the games I played which started off as a Reti opening and later transposed into an English opening. Annotating one's own game definitely has some advantages to it, it helps in explaining the moves and the ideas in a much clearer way and on top of that, the possibility of the game already being annotated by someone else already is much less, unless of course your rating is above 2600.
Starting the game with 1.Nf3 has been a wonderful resource that I have discovered in the past few years. Being a king pawn opening player since the day I started playing chess, switching to 1.Nf3 was like adding a wonderful weapon to my repertoire. The best part about starting with this flexible opening choice is the ability to steer the game into any direction that we like. In many occasions and in the following game, the game gets transposed into an English opening. Today we will discuss some subtle ideas that make a difference arising out of this opening and how to handle them.
Given that we studied the Maroczy bind a couple of weeks before, it is more apt to study this position now. The main difference between the bind and this is the fact that white has not committed e4 yet and it does alter the equation quite a bit. The fact that white does not have the pawn on e4 means that black has more possibility to create the d5 thrust, but again white has taken control of the 'd' file with his pieces instead of the pawn. Also leaving the h1-a8 diagonal open leaves the white bishop on g2 more active.
White has completed his development already here, it is time to decide on the next course of action. I decided upon an interesting plan that hit me during the game and it seemed to work well too. Even though I did not achieve a clear advantage with it yet, I managed to maintain a tiny advantage throughout the game and that helped me provoke the final mistake from my opponent.
The game was a satisfying one for me as I was able to stay on top in both the time and the positional aspects of the game. Hope our readers have gained some valuable tips from the game.
