English Opening | Harpoon The White Whale!

#english #whale #brilliant 

Every now and then, I encounter the The Whale in the English Opening (1. c4 e5 2. e4). Looking up the opening in Eric Schiller's book, "Unorthodox Chess Openings" it seems like just like the Giraffe Attack, this opening may have been named by Schiller as well! He writes on page 144,

"It seems to me rather large and lumbering, and one of its fans has a tendency to spout effusive praise on it. So, I'll call it the Whale."

Now, one of the conceptual ideas in chess is that whenever a pawn moves forward, it weakens something behind. In this case, what has been weakened with e4 and c4 is the d4 square, as none of White's pawns can defend/attack that square. From that logic, Black's next move is reasonably clear; (2... Bc5) to take control of the d4 square.

The rest of the opening is sensible and White castles early kingside on move 6. I decided that in this game I would take the initiative and immediately go on the attack. So firstly, (6... Nd4) to remove White's kingside defensive knight. This works. With White no longer having a defender other than their king on the h-file, I immediately went on the attack and pushed (9... h5).

White trades in the centre but then at the next opportunity (11... Ng4). White attacks my knight with their h-pawn, but this is what I want! I offer to sacrifice the knight with (12... Qh4), a brilliant move! Having delayed castling, my goal was to attack down the h-file and if White opened their h-file by capturing my knight, it would only benefit me! On move 14, White miscalculated the defence and blunders, giving me a massive winning advantage [-6.5].

White managed to avoid checkmate, but we entered the endgame on move 19 where I had two activated rooks, a pawn majority, and a king that was well defended, against White's exposed king and undeveloped knight and rook. White continued to play accurately, and I needed to keep my wits as a knight can be very tricky to play against with rooks. However, on move 30, I had outmanoeuvred White and they resigned in a hopeless position. GG!

The big takeaway from this game is strategically to keep an eye on the prize, the opponent's king! Where the opponent is a little slow, launching an immediate attack in the middlegame can be tactically overwhelming.

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/89005267385