Playing for a win with Black

a quick post about the mindset with the Black pieces.

Playing for a win with Black is possible. One of the learnings from going through stockfish games is that the top chess engine is not afraid to delay castling or play 0-0-0.

In the position above, Black to play. One may think putting the king to safety is Black's priority therefore ..Be7 and ..0-0 seem logical.

Yet Stockfish plays 11..c4!? and then 0-0-0.

I would say the number of games in the Closed Sicilian or Grand Prix Attack with Black playing 0-0-0 is much lower than 0-0 games in chess databases.

In the diagram above, Stockfish goes for ..g7-g5 starting the attack on opposite side. Of course Komodo 13 is weaker than Stockfish, but instead of looking at games with engines at the same level, it is more instructive to see how Stockfish refutes Komodo's play. 

Here's the rest of the game with light annotations

Hou Yifan starts an active plan with the early g7-g5!

It is very clear to me that Black is not planning to play 0-0, and this is also a Closed Sicilian opening.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Now this mindset or plan for Black is not specific to systems against 1.e4

it is especially useful against 1.d4 and against players trying the Torre Attack ( Nf3,Bg5 ) or London System ( Nf3,Bf4). I have already blogged about ideas against the London system a while back, here's one entry if you look for an anti-london set-up https://www.chess.com/blog/thechesscorner64/london-system-musings-how-to-play-with-black

Here's my most recent game against the Torre Attack.

Position Black to play

Here's a game I found with the standard 0-0 plan, not the idea I had in mind

and now my recent blitz game , implementing a delayed castling and planning to play 0-0-0 later on

opening position , Black to play

As you can see, Black has played an early g7-g5 and has refrained from castling. Here Black can play ..Nh5 or ..g4 as in the game. 

I was able to put white's king under pressure and while my king ended up on d8 after Qe4+ the position was lost for White.

Here's the game with light annotations.