Winning Pawn Structures: Sacing on h6 with an IQP: Part 1

Let's learn some more about the Isolated Queen's Pawn. Today, Kamsky is going to introduce us to yet another plan for White that is both dynamic and exciting—the Bishop Sacrifice on h6! In a normal looking Nizmo Indian, Kamsky blasts open the Black's Castle before flooding the Kingside with his pieces. Is checkmate in the cards? Nah, the once World Championship contender has some more brutal and agonizing in mind.

Don't know what I am talking about? This is a series exploring all the best plans of the IQP position using Alexander Baburin's Winning Pawn Structures as a guide. Be sure to review the two previous plan we discussed: F7 ATTACK and ROOK LIFT.

As always, you have the option of watching my analysis instead of reading if that works better for you. I am actually a full five videos ahead of this blog on MY CHANNEL at YouTube. Head on over to get a leg up on your opponents.

As I mentioned above, we're looking a sacrifice on h6. This motif becomes possible when White has created enough pressure against h7 in order induce Black to advance his h pawn. Typically White encourages such a weakening in a pretty straight forward manner:

1. A Bishop Queen duo pointing at h7: The Bishop is placed along the c1-h7 diagonal with the Queen applying pressure either in a battery along the same diagonal, or from h-file.

2. Another Bishop on g5 threatening to remove the defending Knight from h6.

The painful part about Kamsky's game is that he didn't even have to work induce the weakness—Beliavsky volunteered h6 unprovoked. Let's have a look:

Learning Objective: Pay special attention to Black's slightly misplaced pieces, especially his Queen and DSB as these are the precursors to Kamsky's attack. Without them, White would have been able to gain enough tempi to bring the rest of his army to Kingside. Also, note the variation with 19...Be7 which displays three! IQP attacking motifs in a single variation.

 Summary: I found it particularly interesting how Black's misplaced Bishop and Queen lead to a further misplacing of his remaining defenders—remember that the Knight on f6 was forced to the lesser h7 square, which then forced Black to play f5 allowing White to win e6 and f5. If Black's Bishop had been on e7 instead of d6 it would have been a monster failure since White would have not have gained any tempi after the sacrifice.

Well, you've done it! Yep, only one game this time. I decided to break my Blogs down a little more so they are more digestible. Lets face, I bet most of you didn't make it all the way to end of my previous blogs. If you did, thanks for proving me wrong!

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