king walk
Sort:
Sweet game. Thanks for sharing :)
The black square invasion and positional sacrifice to put the bishop on E3 was fun to work out. It causes a lot of over the board problems for white. The kingwalk was fun to avoid getting checkmated. And the final breakthrough was fun to plan. A good game to learn from.
Prize for the most completely annotated game I have seen here so far!
A very well played game, thanks for posting it
Is there a name for the opening defense played by black? I don't believe I've seen it before. If I understand it correctly, black turned the tables on white's attempt at a queen's gambit, forcing a pawn trade which left black with two center pawns and white with one.
Yes the intent of black was to play either a Ben-oni or a Benko Gambit. Both are very sharp and give black lots of counterplay. White normally advances the d pawn to d5 after 2...c5 and the struggle is over the center.
In the present variation, white decided to keep the center fluid, so I attempted to transpose into a Sicilian type position where I am also very comfortable. With white not playing e4 it was just a queens pawn/ english type position. There black can go after the black squares and I am also comfortable with that.
During the course of a rich positional game like this, both sides made good moves and bad ones. I would like to say that from an instructional point of view, it is more important sometimes to make moves that may be hard to deal with over the board than moves that clarify and simplify. Finding the best move on either side is more difficult when you have lots of pressure on you. It is not always best to exchange pieces and pawns, even if you are slightly ahead in material. Maintaining tension and keeping the pressure on may actually be a better course of action.
Another thing to remember is by the opening, you probably will have an idea what "style" your opponent is. Attacking your opponent's style with a contrary style may throw him off his game enough in order for you to have an advantage.