Wood's Creative Correspondence Assault - Best Of The 40s - Wood vs. Wallis, 1945
Baruch Harold Wood was a fixture of British chess for decades. In 1935, he founded the magazine, "Chess," and he edited the magazine for more than 50 years, up until 1988. Wood was a strong player as well as an organizer and arbiter, but one his best successes was winning the 1945 British Correspondence Championship.
In that event, Wood won the following gem, a flawed but beautiful attacking game against the French Defense where Wood uses his major pieces to hound and eventually checkmate Black's king.
Top 10 Games of the 1940s
- #1: ????
- #2: ????
- #3: ????
- #4: ????
- #5: Wood vs. Wallis, 1945
- #6: Reshevsky vs. Vasconcelos, 1948
- #7: Euwe vs. Keres, 1940
- #8: Liublinsky vs. Botvinnik, 1943
- #9: Zita vs. Bronstein, 1946
- #10: Siff vs. Kashdan, 1948
- See also: Top 10 of the 1950s, Top 10 of the 1960s, Top 10 of the 1970s, Top 10 of the 1980s, Top 10 of the 1990s, Top 10 of the 2000s, and Top 10 of the 2010s
Wallis selects a sideline in the French, reaching a unique structure which, thanks to games like this, we now know is too dangerous for Black. Wood takes advantage of his large lead in development to press his opponent. He really amps up the pressure by lifting rooks on both the a- and h-files, but then he is willing to surrender both rooks to expose his opponent's king and attempt to finish the game solely with his monarchs.
My annotations are below. There are a lot of interesting sidelines that are as fun and instructive as the main line.
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