Positional help!

I played this game which I believe I lost because I made some incorrect positional decisions. I would like some help at spotting those errors. Thanks!

1. e4 c5 2. f4 is called the Grand Prix. Here you can play 2. ... d5 immediately intending 3. exd5 Nf6 and capturing on d5 with the knight. If white protects the pawn with 4. c4 you can play 4. ... e6 5. dxe6 Bxe6. This is a gambit. Black has given up a pawn for better development. Practice has shown this position to favor black.

After 4. e5, you are headed into the Advance variation of the French Defense. White will almost certainly push d4. You want to pressure the d4 pawn as much as possible. So you will play Nc6 and Qb6.

8. ... b6. Here Qb6 is probably better. 

16. ... a4. You wanted to keep him from playing b3, but why fear opening lines on the side of the board where you are better? Also, b3 simply makes the c3 pawn a weakness. I prefer playing b5 and then b4 intending to take on c3. This opens the b-file and creates a weak pawn on c3.

18. ... g6. Anytime you push pawns in front of your king it creates weaknesses. 

Hi regnskog, 

in your commentary to the game you make quite a few accurate remarks, well done for someone who has taken up chess only recently!

I will try to give some help where I think I can find improvements:

Not having seen this opening can cost you dear points, as this is the Grand Prix Attack, an opening quite popular at club level. What is really annoying about it is that if Black doesn't know exactly what to do about it, White will get an attack which almost plays itself, because there is always the same plan involved: Bring over as many pieces to the kingside as possible, sacrifice a pawn on f5 and some pieces to go with that and mate. Even the pieces' routes to the kingside are roughly the same every time.

The main antidote to this is supposed to be a pawn sacrifice :

There are other ways for Black to combat the GPA, but this has proved the most reliable. In your game, after 4.e5 you have transposed to a fairly normal position of the French Defence. I'm not too familiar with that, but I seem to remember that you can indeed post your knight on f5 without having to fear g4 in many cases. Sometimes you have just the reply Nh4 to g4, in others you can even secure its outpost by h7-h5. So your overall scheme of development seems to be correct.

Castling short wasn't so catastrophic, I think but I don't like 8...b6 either. I prefer Loomis' suggestion of 8...Qb6 to put pressure on d4. You could follow up with Bd7 and perhaps even 0-0-0, if you think the kingside is too dangerous. Of course it would be ideal to have that knight on f5, where it pressurizes d4, too.

11...Bxg5

Perhaps this move is indeed necessary if the knight gets too annoying in front of your nose, but here you quite carelessly open lines in front of your king. It is true that from a static point of view your knight should be superior to his dark squared bishop, but we are talking about long term attacking possibilities here. Instead of playing the rather pointless maneuvre d2-f3-h5 with his knight, White could have tried something like Nd2-f3-h2-g4(after h2-h4), when there may appear tactical  blows including Nf6.

 13...Ba6  was definitely a good idea, as the Bd3 is potentially dangerous.

In my opinion 16...a4 is a mistake: As you have observed correctly, the queenside is the ground where you attack, but in order to do so you need to open lines there. After White's a3 you'll never achieve that unless a totally unexpected sacrifice is suddenly possible. From this it follows that you don't have to fear b2-b3 at any stage. After the queenside was closed, I don't think you had an objective reason for playing for the full point.

In the later course of your analysis you talk about good outposts for your knights. It is perfectly correct to assume that you should land your knights on potentially weak squares in yout opponent's camp, but if you just put them there without anything real to attack, they will be just stranded on their nice outposts far away from the real action. It would be a completely different matter if you could assist them with an attack by the other pieces, but for that you need open lines or at least pawn breaks to open these lines.

18...g6 should only be played when absolutely necessary. By this move you create the gaping hole on f6 which will finally kill your king.

Right, this is about all the positional advice I can think up now, I hope it helps you at least a little bit.

Greetz,

Torkil 

 I agree!