How To Prevent 1…, e5

The main thing that openings are about is the center. In chess lessons you will hear advice about how to control it. Almost everyone knows 1.e4, e5. Instead of playing this, you could prevent black from playing e5 with f4.

The move puts pressure on e5. Your opponent can play e5 and turn the tide:

It is not a good idea for white to accept the e5 and d6 pawns because black will have a development advantage. Instead of playing fxe5, play g3: this builds a pawn chain and protects f4.

After that black will need to play d5 in order to control the center.

Playing d4 will block the pawn and put pressure on e5.

Bg4 pins the pawn to the queen.

Bg2 puts pressure on d5. Protective moves will follow.

Did you see what black overlooked? 

Black didn’t capture the key piece of this idea: the knight. What if black captured the knight?

White’s position crumbled, but white survived and fixed the position. White’s only weakness are the doubled pawns on the a file. For those who want more, here is a position that prepares trades in 12 turns!

There is a trap here:

Coming back to preventing the e5 move, here is how it could look like:

There is a trap here.

Thank you for reading! My next article: A Strange Closed Game.