Winning Pawn Structures: Sacing on h6 with an IQP: Part 3

Welcome to Part 3 of Sacing on h6 with an IQP. If you recall from Part 2 we focused on a key piece formation for White the lends itself well to a Bishop sacrifice on h6. To enumerate:

1. Queen on h3

2. Bishop along the b1/h7 diagonal

3. Knight on e5

4. Bishop on g5

These forces combined generate significant pressure against h7 which often induces h6 allowing our thematic sacrifice. But what happens if Black deals with the pressure by playing g6 instead of h6?

Today's match up between Kavalek and Pritchett deals with this problem directly and demonstrates a maneuvering of White's pieces to take advantage of the holes that g6 left behind.

As always, I am providing a video recording of this analysis on MY CHANNEL. Not to mention, I am several videos ahead of my blog so head on over to get a jump on!

Coming out of a Semi-Tarrasch instead of a Caro-Kann, by move 16 White has already positioned his pieces as we mentioned above leaving Black forced to make some sort of Kingside concession. This time Black chooses g6 which creates its own set of problems: namely a weakening of f6, g7 and h6. In the variations starting with 19. Bxd5, we'll see that White misses his opportunity to use the weakness of f6 to weaken f7 when he could have executed another thematic sacrifice on f7.

Learning Objective: Once g6 is on the board, White immediately begins to retrain his pieces. Note his Bishop shifts to the a2/g8 diagonal, additionally White plays Re3 with the idea of attacking f7. Namely, once g6 and g7 became “granite” White shifted his attack to e6 and f7 where he was able to add more attacking units.

Summary: Why did White miss 19. Bxd5? Perhaps he was too focused on attacking f7/e6 and didn't fully appreciate the weakness on f6 or maybe he was too prejudiced against trading off his LSB which is understandable as you guys have heard me harp about how important the LSB is. Regardless, White's regrouping shifted the area where he was exerting the most pressure allowing for tactics to arise in the position even if they were missed.

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