King's Indian Attack and my game against GM Smirin

Today I'd like to feature my most recent rated blitz game on chess.com

The opening : the King's Indian Attack (KIA) . Featured in many books such as this one

and of course an opening played at the highest level by Bobby Fischer..

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My opponent in this game : GM Ilya Smirin, a well known GM

Here's the game link https://www.chess.com/game/live/61713032127

Lets go through what is my best to date effort on 3 online minutes blitz

The move order is 1e4 c5 2Nf3 e6 3d3 but White will continue with the King's Indian Set-up, meaning g3,Bg2,Nbd2

Here's the position after Move 7

Here GM Smirin goes for e6-e5. At first it seems a bit odd to push the e pawn again, but Black wants to avoid e4-e5 and wants the "Botvinnik set-up" d6,e5,Be6,Qd7 , let me illustrate this 

But this is the thing. I know this set-up as I have used it with the Black pieces. For instance another israeli GM Lev Psakhis has won a nice game with it. https://www.chess.com/games/view/829925

The Be6,Qd7 with the c5-d6-e5 structure has been championed by Botvinnik long time ago !

What is the plan for White though ? Because I have played this system, I know that White should play a2-a3 and b2-b4. I do not know the exact move order but I am familiar with the main ideas, which is important in a blitz game. a classic KIA theme would be Bf4 , h2-h4, Nf1-h2 but here we have to proceed differently.

Position on move 13

and here I played Nb3 with the idea d3-d4 to fight for the center. the position is balanced, I did not gain an opening advantage but I played at around the same speed as Black.

Lets move forward to the middle-game, Black to play

in the diagram above, I just played 24 Kh2 tucking the King away. King's Safety super important in blitz especially against a strong opponent and GM. yes, Black can take on c3 winning a pawn and this is what Smirin played. 

Now we reach the critical position of the game, White to play

You can try to guess the move in the diagram above.

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in the game I played a pawn push. The chess.com analysis states it is the best move, but this is the turning point. With opposite color bishops, the initiative is key and I want to play on the f file and target f7. I also threatens Bxh6 with this move 26 f5!

let me show the diagram

the engine eval is only +0.2 pawns for White. but this is quite deceiving from a human point of view: difficult to defend as Black.  Note the times 1:40 for White vs 1:27 for Black.  Meaning slight pressure on the clock. 

here's the finish without variations

and with full variations showing it was possible to defend but certainly challenging

here's the game review graph

the turning point was 26 f5! and we can see the game was balanced until then. Never give up and take your chances !

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Agreed Coach!