Martin vs the world analysis thread #4

It doesn't matter. The rules are quite clear that inaccurate notation with a legal move is still binding. But yeah I'll try to keep an eye on that.

Three games of mine have finished, so I can devote more time to analysis.

I agree with keeping the position closed, specifically the queenside and the centre.

I want the position to open up, but preferably in our favour. Our pieces are not optimally placed at the moment, we want the position to remain closed until we've fixed this. Then perhaps we can open up the kingside. That would be my vague plan at the moment, but whether it can be achieved is another matter.

Thank you, all three of you, for keeping things going.  The ball is in Martin's court again.

From my perspective, although the next few days will be the coldest in 12 months, at least the days are getting longer, and that alone gives me renewed enthusiasm.

Best,

Bob

Waaaait wait wait. Why have we not played g4 yet? We should open up the kingside and give Martin something to worry about! This is also a 5 check game, after all

Even if an attack is unsound, It'll still work as long as it exposes the king.

Our king is exposed if the queenside opens up. We should definitely seek to open up the kingside, but first we should improve our position. We have a knight on the back rank, a bishop that needs to come to c3, a rook on j3, if we attack too soon we could find ourselves wishing we were a little more patient. 

Martin can't really attack us while we reposition some pieces.

Do you mean a rook on h3?

Yes, I have got used to bulldog boards. Of course I do mean h3, this is a normal board!

I think the only time it might potentially have made some sense to play g4 is on move 14 (14. g4 instead of 14. Nd1). Before that we had not even played f3. I  did consider 14. g4, albeit extremely briefly (see last paragraph of post #421). I didn't look at 14. g4 enough, but the reason I didn't vote for it is that I couldn't see a way for us to get a free check after we sacrifice a pawn with 14. g4 (from my very limited analysis anyway). I voted 14. Nd1 because it seemed much safer and I was too lazy to look more at 14. g4.

I'm very careful when I play. I pretty much never sacrifice anything unless I see exactly how to checkmate or win back material or it's obvious to me where the compensation is. When I sacrifice something it's usually because I have a ton of analysis to back it up.

Now that I think about it, 14. g4 might be a lot stronger than I initally thought during the game.

See the above board for analysis. I don't claim to have looked at everything or found the best moves, but 14. g4 looks very promising for us. I completely missed these interesting ideas during the game (whoops, sorry!). I guess I just assumed that 14. g4 would just lose a pawn and not really lead anywhere. If I recall correctly, during the game I thought that 14. g4 hxg4 15. fxg4 Nexg4 16. h5 would not work for us for some reason, or that we would not have time to play 16. h5 because our bishop on e3 is "hanging" and that we would have to deal with that first. I definitely didn't look deep enough at 14. g4 during the game.

Interesting. Patzer was telling us we could play g4 but he didn't go into any detail. Neither me nor chesspro looked at in detail either. I said it wasn't a move we could play soon, I think I though it was premature because he won't play 14... hxg4. Of course chesspro is right in that if it's a mistake for him to capture the pawn, it's not a sac. I can't really remember why I thought we shouldn't play it yet, I think I was probably thinking our knight and dark bishop were on suboptimal squares. But I'll have to reassess that.

He probably won't capture g4 because it does look like too much for him to handle in 5-check. I think 14... Kg8 is more likely, unless he can't handle 15. gxh5.

g4 is still going to be in the position when he's moved. I'll definitely look at this attack.

I remember one reason why I wanted to play Nd1, and that was to stop Qa5 and Qb4 ideas, hitting the weak c4 pawn. His position is difficult here, we're not giving him any counterplay. He could be in a kind of zugzwang where all he can do is either weaken his position or wait. If that's the case, it was our last two moves that did that, while these ideas remain. 

Let's see what he plays. Kg8 and Nh7 complicates things, but if we can give up the exchange for a repetition, we should be fine.

One thing to be careful of is threefold, which might come before 5-check. I would imagine it shouldn't be a problem, given the final check can come with brute force. But it's something we need to be aware of.

He has Rh8 too, but that's ultra defensive, and we should have time to get the other rook to h1.

...b6 seems rather passive, I think.

His position is passive, he doesn't really have any active plans. That means we don't need to rush into any attack, we should be fine to prepare g4 as much as possible. This game is on my to-do list for tomorrow.

The main moves I would consider here are 16. g4, 16. Nf2 and 16. Bc3. 16. g4 still looks very interesting, even though we've played Nd1 (which might make 16. g4 slightly worse than 14. g4). Most of the ideas in the 14. g4 lines I've already mentioned still apply now for 16. g4. The main difference is that we no longer have a knight on c3 that protects e4, black has the option of playing ...Bb4 or ...Ba5 with "tempo" in some lines and it takes 1 more move for our rook on a1 to get into the game (since we have a knight on d1 blocking it).

At first I thought 16. g4 wont work because we lose a pawn on e4. The line I looked at was 16. g4 hxg4 17. fxg4 Nxe4 18. Qc2 f5 (18...Bg3+ 19. Kf1 f5 20. Kg2 Bh8 21. h5 looks promising for white, so I think 18...Bg3+ immediately is bad for black; black should only play ...Bg3+ after 18...f5 I think) and now it's not clear to me how white should continue. 19. h5 is probably bad now because of 19...Bg3+ 20. Kf1 fxg4+ (discovered check) and it looks a bit unclear but I think we lose that position.

But I think I found a crazy queen sac that's an improvement to the line above. After 16. g4 hxg4 17. fxg4 Nxe4 I think we can play the crazy looking 18. h5. Against 18...Nxd2 we win with 5 forced checks, starting with 19. hxg6+. After 18...Kg8, 19. hxg6 looks strong for us. He still can't play 19...Nxd2 because we will get 5 checks by force. I haven't looked very much at 18...Bg3+, but I think it also looks good for us. See the board below for details.

I've looked at a few lines after 16. g4, but not enough to determine if it works. But it certainly looks like an interesting move. I guess black is not forced to take a "free" pawn on g4 or e4, but if he does then it looks like we get a good position. I will need to look at this more.

I have no idea which move is best here. If we slowly prepare to play g4 then I'm a bit worried that it wont be as effective as if we play it right away somehow (although I don't know what black would play to prepare for g4). g4 feels like the kind of move you would play in 5-check (blowing open the position to expose the enemy king).

Sorry I've been pretty busy, I'm taking a look now before bed. I'll probably sleep on it and then take a fresh look in the morning before adding my thoughts. 

Just want to say that queen sac works in 5-check, best I can tell. The problem with that line though seems to be 18... g5, which comes with a tempo as our queen is still under attack. 19. Qc2 might keep us better though, this needs to be looked at. 

Your analysis looks good here. g4 is definitely going to be the focus of my analysis, at least for now.

g4 looking good to me, too.  But he won't dare take that free pawn with the Knight. (any free pawn)

But what I like is we'll be taking the battle to him, finally.

I vote g4. It opens the h-file and gives us a great attack if he captures the Queen