Tactics and Strategy | WINNING against the Modern Defense!
#principles #tactics #strategy #modern
This was a very interesting game where my opponent used the Modern Defense (1. e4 g6). As I have little preparation against hypermodern systems (and don't really like them), this meant that I knew practically no theory from move 2 and so it is an interesting game to review from the point of view of tactics and strategy!
Against an unfamiliar opening, I try to play according to opening principles - take the centre with pawns, develop the minor pieces, generally knights before bishops, and then castle. If there is an opportunity, don't necessarily castle early create the opportunity to castle both short and long. Try to avoid opening the centre before castling unless there is an obvious opportunity.
And that's pretty much what happened in the opening with a little bit of spice. On move 5, I played (5. Bb5) pinning Black's knight to their king. I kind of knew that this was probably unnecessarily provocative and on evaluation, this was the case. My advantage dropped from [+0.4 → +0.2] and Stockfish rated that developing the other knight with (5. Nc3) was best. Knights before bishops!
On move 8 I developed my queen, and on move 9, had an opportunity to castle either side. As it turned out, the engine believed in alternate moves as optimal, but nonetheless, I entered the middle game in a perfectly good place with a small advantage [+0.3]. Opening principles work!
We both castle kingside, so I use the strategy of launching a kingside attack, marshalling my pieces to the kingside. Although my execution was far from perfect, the strategy was largely successful. By move 22, I was encroaching into Black's kingside position with an evaluation of up to [+6] and then on move 24, a surprising mating net of [+M12]! Now, I couldn't see this during in game, though I had an intuition that a mating line might exist somewhere. These are complicated positions!
Not able to see an obvious way to break through and finding myself down on time (around 11 min to Black's 20 min), I use another tactical approach. Black's queen was relatively exposed and isolated, so I pulled back some of my attacking pieces and started attacking the queen! Creating complications where you hold the threats is a good way of creating errors and opportunities. And we did! From move 27, my opponent and I make five consecutive blunders! However, my blunders created opportunities while Black was scrambling to defend. Tactical ideas? Attack down the h-file with an h-pawn push. Entice/compel Black to move the king's defensive pawns forward. And of course, attack the queen with lesser pieces!
By move 33, we had entered a rook pair and queen endgame and Black makes a terminal tactical error [+6] which might not be immediately obvious. They brought their rook back onto the back rank (3... Rff8) to form a connected rook pair to attack my queen. However, this immediately allowed me to advance my rook to the seventh rank (34. Re7). A tactic - rooks are powerful on the second and seventh ranks - and in this case, I've "delaminated", effectively peeled off the black king's defensive pawns! They had both advanced only one step to the sixth rank, but in this context, it was one step too far! With the rook a forcefield holding Black's king on to the back rank, the queen could now dance around the f- and g-pawns. First check on the e-file and then check on the open h-file, and then striking on h7 with mate. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/78804725441
