Your Bishop Unleashed
Hi friends! Two young students, who can barely reach the middle of the table, are playing their own game. Pieces are landing with a thud, thud, thud. So I ask my question to break their momentum: "Why does White have two bishops on the same color?"
The players freeze and hunch forward, lifting their eyes to me with a blank stare. It's happened again. The novices have inadvertently broken one of chess's fundamental laws. Two bishops each. Different colors. About all they can do is start over again.
In this post, I invite you to slow down and spend some time with me as we wade into the fantastic world of bishops and what makes them tick. We'll start with basics in the openings and work our way gradually to more complicated positions. I'll close this blog with a closer look at bishops from one of my own games.
My Game: Seeking to Slow Aggressive Bishops
Taking the time to tuck or stack a bishop behind other pieces can lead to easy wins because of the long-range capabilities of this so-called minor piece. Candidate Master and FIDE instructor Can Kabadayi has interviewed several cognitive scientists on his YouTube Channel about tunnel vision and blunders. These conversations are fascinating because Kabadayi notes how improving players seem to miss out on key information on the chess board. In most scenarios, we can only hold about seven chunks of data in our minds at one time. So if we don't have a big enough picture that includes piece safety, we miss key alignments and risk losing everything.
Below is an example from Kabadayi (with some of my own game commentary) that is all about what NOT to do. Black is about to put the finishing touches on the game in a dominant position. If I point out the sniper, you can probably see the glaring mistake that Black could make. Then again, I might say that and you still blunder the game. You can either seal the deal or fold.
The corollary danger is that a sniper may become so embedded in an operation that there is no way out. Because bishops only move on one color, they may be easier to trap and render useless. Consider this opening position in the London where White proudly stakes their bishop on f4. Here, Black replies with the unconventional 2...h5. The next move is crucial. Can White sense the danger or will they play a robotic move like 3. d3?
Granted, 2..h5!? isn't the most principled move. It has its weaknesses, but it's fun to play, especially if you'd like to make a London player stop in their tracks and have to think about the board before they make move #3. Give it a try. It's never too early to impose your will and challenge your opponent to question everything.
As a long-range attacker, bishops can deliver decisive blows breaking open our enemy's position. Jose Capablanca, in his classic Chess Fundamentals, shows his readers an elementary position with everything equal and Black to play. But as is often the case, one false move is all that's needed.
Play through this combination starting with the move Nf6 and see how Capablanca teaches next steps.
There are a good many other traps...but the type given above is the most common of all. —Jose Capablanca
If you don't believe the venerable Capablanca, below are two more examples. Can you finish off Black in each?
My first example is from the otherwise subdued e4 opening, the Giuoco Piano (ECO C54). Seen as child's play by most, in the hands of a young, daring German, Carl Walbrodt (1871–1902), a seemingly elementary position comes to life. Later, American John Baird (1852–1917) expanded on Walbrodt's ideas. Even intermediate players should not underestimate the Walbrodt-Baird gambit.
In this gambit line, Black has to be exceedingly careful or everything falls apart. An inexperienced player might interpret White's rush to castle, conceding a pawn, as an oversight or a miscalculation. In reality, White seizes the initiative, posing new problems with 7. e5. To avoid disaster, Black has to find an only crucial only move. Let's see what happens.
I know you're thinking, "That would never happen to me. I would never walk into that sort of minefield." Consider then Eylon Nakar as he played the French defense against grandmaster Nigel Short. All it took was a short lapse in board vision and Nakar's game to an end. The base commentary here is from Chess Pattern Recognition for Beginners (a wrongly titled, fairly sophisticated book).
When the knight of f6 is missing on a kingside with a castled king, watch out for the classical sacrifice on h7! — Arthur van de Oudeweetering
Reading these rules reminds me of another chess rule that we should always keep in mind.
Rules in chess assume 'all else is equal,' but all else rarely is equal, so we need to judge ideas based on specific circumstances. —Eric Kislik
As a game position unfolds, it's important to have a sense of the ideal squares and initial responsibilities that you would like to assign various pieces. One of the best, most-repeated plans is to develop bishops outside a pawn chain. This happens famously in the London opening, and many young d4 players learn the power of 1. d4 followed by 2. Bf4 (maybe they'll avoid my earlier pitfall and wait a move to close the pawn chain).
I played in a small OTB tournament on Saturday August 2nd and drew Black on board #1. My opponent chose not the London but the Larsen opening (1. b3). I placed my dark squared bishop safely behind my central pawns to secure the center, inviting my experienced opponent to fulfill his early attack on my knight. If he was willing to give up a bishop pair on move number five, I wasn't going to complain.
So what is a bishop pair and why are they so important? A bishop pair--where one player has both bishops and the other has given up one--is a unique piece configuration that players attempt to use to their advantage in the middle and endgame.
Let me introduce you to one of best chess players you may have never heard of: Dawid Janowsky. Born in Poland, he is one of the only players of his era to score wins against the first four world champions: Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine. According to Edward Winter (the best source I can find about this forgotten great), Janowsky scored a dozen victories against this foursome.
I bring up Janowksy because he loved to play with a bishop pair. For a name that's largely been forgotten, he was famous for using bishop pairs.
He had only two rules in chess: always attack; always get the two bishops (and, indeed, he used the advantage of the two bishops wonderfully).
—Ossip Bernstein (writing about Janowsky in 1956)
Here's a sample game from Janowsky playing White against the legendary Frank Marshall, who had to be annoyed with the experiments Janowsky was conducting on the board.
If you'd like to learn more about technical plans with bishop pairs, check out this short, instructive video from Coach Kestony teaching about maximizing the material imbalance when you have two bishops and your opponent only has one. Through pawns and piece placement, you should be able to exert great influence over how the game turns out.
My Game: Seeking to Slow Aggressive Bishops
I want to return to my struggle against the Larsen opening. Once I played Bd6, I didn't know what might be coming next. The last thing I expected was the positional battle that ensued. In fighting against my opponent's early fianchetto, I thought the right play was to lock up the dark squares and throw away the key.
This is what was on my mind as we transitioned toward the middle game. I could see prospects of a push on the queenside. I've included some game analysis including a surprising push on move 15 that I considered but dismissed too quickly. Though this game was shaping up well; ultimately a later blunder sealed my fate. I needed to trust the position and continue to play things out.
Thanks for reading and exploring bishops with me. If you have any great examples from your own games of bishop pairs or bishops winning out over knights, paste them in the discussion below.
