Nova Daily - 1 March 2025

Hi!

When I wanted to prepare for dinner today I accidentally dropped two bowls from the cupboard, and I managed to cut my hand while picking up the pieces. Definitely not my best action of the day. Luckily the cut is only superficial, and the only things I lost in the process (apart from the two bowls) were a few drops of blood and a plaster.

Welcome to March! We have bloodshed and cracking crockery for you!

- The year 2025

Chess can be seen as war without bloodshed. Its players fight out a battle over a wooden board with two equally large armies of sixteen fighting units. When one of the units is captured and has to leave the stage, usually (bluntness of one of the players aside) it doesn't sustain permanent damage. It will be ready to take its place and role in the very next game. Unless, of course, Anish Giri pocketed one of the pawns again.

Given my clumsiness, I can't guarantee I'll be free from involuntarily inflicting wounds on my own body for the rest of the month, but I hope the count will stick to 1.

The game

Today's game was an Exchange Caro-Kann in which I felt I almost inflicted another wound on myself. It's useful to gain more experience in the CK, especially now that I'm getting closer to the 2000 rating limit will be faced with decent counterplay more and more frequently. I feel that I'm not completely ready for the 2000 echelons, but it's precisely because of this that I need to continue playing it. I picked up from Robert Greene's Mastery that the best time to start something is just a little before you're ready. So, that's what I've done today. And it paid off.

My thoughs:

Model games:

Schandorff doesn't recommend any setup with 6...e5. He opts instead for the slightly more solid 6...e6, intending to develop quickly with 7...Bd6, 8...Nge7, and 9...0-0, with play similar to the Exchange QGD. While having less games than its alternatives 6...Nf6 and 6...g6, it has a vast logic to it.

The following game by Matthias Blübaum shows some of the ideas to build up a position. It's not completely how Schandorff suggests the line to be played but it's interesting nevertheless:

The analysis:

Not even remotely a perfect game, but one that has a lot of takeaway points.

What can I take away from this game:

1. The opening setup with 6...e5 is better than it looks, even if the literature doesn't quite agree with it. The resulting IQP positions are fine for black; accepting the pawn sacrifice is very dangerous for white. In the analysis of Lakdawala's variation, black missed the chance to obtain the initiative with 11...g5, after which black has more than ample compensation for the pawn since white isn't able to conduct a harmonious and sensible development.
2. 6...e6 may once have had an unimpressive reputation, but there is definitely something to be gained from it; so much so that Schandorff proposes it. It leads to a reversed QGD, and black can treat it as such. I'm thinking about keeping both these lines available for playing. The natural 6...Nf6 is also a viable alternative.
3. Following the game variation, 8.Bc2 is an alternative for white, preserving the bishop. This deserves its own study.
4. If I want to play h7-h6 to challenge the bishop on g5, I have to do it before white is able to sacrifice the Exchange on e6.
5. In the late middlegame, the full bishop pair was good compensation for the defect in pawn structure, and this remained so until the very end. White had a very tough position to play even up a pawn.