Space and the Marching King

While preparing for the Hamilton Summer Open (Aug. 20, 21) and the Labour Day Open (Sep. 3-5), I stumbled upon a super interesting game played by Nigel Short.  I have the feeling I've seen it before which makes a lot of sense, seeing how beautiful it is.  

Unlike most tournaments, I've decided to prepare for these ones differently.  Rather than spending most/all my time on opening (read: dragon) lines and tactics training, I've been studying a couple GM games from various openings just to figure out where I should be putting my pieces, and what my general plan is.  In the past few tournaments, I've found myself in fairly obscure positions where I had to make critical decisions in terms of a long-term plan.  When I wasn't in a familiar position, I almost always made the wrong choice.  Hopefully this form of preparation will fix that.

Long story short, this blog is more for me than anything.  I'm hoping by annotating a 'model' game, I will be able to understand exactly what features/ideas matter and should be employed in various openings.  

At the same time, this should be fairly educational for all 1. e4 players.