Chess opening - the name's a bit of a giveaway

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Avatar of stozz20

I'm in the early stages as a daily game (move 10) and the opening name amused me.

It started as an Indian game (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 d5 3.e3 c5) and then after a few more moves (4.Nf3 Qb6 5.Nc3) I was considering taking the b pawn with my queen and attacking the c3 knight. Fortunately, the name given to this opening was "London System: Poisoned Pawn Variation" so I thought "thanks, I won't do that then..." 

Avatar of ThrillerFan

Poisoned Pawn Variations are not always all that poisoned!

 

Najdorf Sicilian:  1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 8.Qd2 Qxb2 is called the Poisoned Pawn Variation, and yet, nobody has found a refutation.

 

On the other hand, the French Poisoned Pawn really is poisoned!:  1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4 Qc7 8.Qxg7 Rg8 9.Qxh7 cxd4 and here the pawn truly is poisoned as 10.cxd4?? loses to 10...Qc3+!

 

Now I don't play trash like the London System, and against it I do something completely different than you, so I can't speak for THAT "Poisoned Pawn" variation, but don't just assume that it means it's truly poisoned!

 

You'd have to find a Najdorf Specialist to go deeper into the theory.  I only know it as far as White having the choice between 10.e5 and 10.f5.  Najdorf isn't really my thing.  The French is.

Avatar of FizzyBand

Yeah the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn Main Line goes

 

Avatar of FizzyBand

White definitely has winning chances in all lines, but it is hard to win with White. Black can hold with best play generally, though the room for error is virtually none.

Avatar of stozz20
KetoOn1963 wrote:

Its considered cheating to discuss an ongoing game.

Ouch, that's me told. I wasn't planning on opening a discussion, just that I thought it amusing that chess.com itself was telling me not to take the pawn, and I wonder if there were any other openings like that. In the future I will wait until the game has been completed before commenting.

Avatar of stozz20

I have seen that FizzyBand has posted a game, and I can see that someone else has posted some theory, but I have no intention of looking through them until after the game has finished, at which point I can hopefully contribute my own thoughts. Given that others have gone to the bother of writing posts (albeit unsolicited), I would consider it rude to delete them without looking through them later.

Avatar of stozz20

 

Avatar of stozz20

Well this was the result of the poisoned pawn variation that I (as black) played. After some thought I realised on move 6 that the b pawn could well have been poisoned, as 6 ... Qxb2 7 Nb5 probably was probably going to lose me my knight after 8 Nc7+ so played more defensively, trying to keep the position closed and setting up a plan to get rid of his dark-squared bishop, as I remember reading somewhere that the dark-squared bishop was a key part of the London System...

I managed to blunder a pawn on move 28, but then used this missing pawn along with a knight sacrifice to expose the king and managed to get a win. It was quite hard going so I might need to think about other responses to the London System.