Serendipity ? Or Do We Just Need A Pawn Break ?

From Wiki...

"Serendipity means a "fortuitous happenstance" or "pleasant surprise". It was first coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to a friend Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”.

The notion of serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of scientific innovation such as Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928, and the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer in 1945, to name but a few.

The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.^[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.^"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity

How often have we heard or read that GM x had only been talking to GM y about a specific variation of a little played opening the night before sitting down to play GM z who instigated that variation against him !

I like to think that when things just fall into my lap it's because I'm following the "right path" in the general sense or perhaps specifically in the chess sense.

I would be interested in other peoples stories on this because I reckon there must be quite a few around.

I played an OTB game last weekend that was quite uneventful and led to a draw:

I was slightly better at one stage but made a similiar strategic error that Marshall made against Capablanca below. I didn't activate my kingside majority. The thought just didn't occur to me.

How do I know that ? Serendipity ! I'm working through Neil McDonald's excellent book on the Giants of Chess Strategy and coincidentally or serendipitously it was the next game to be worked through. After putting my game in Fritz and seeing that at one stage it liked me playing e4 more than anything else - but McDonald's book gave me some understanding - or more likely, reminded me of something that I once knew and needed to be reminded of .

Here is Marshall not activating his kingside majority against Capa. Although the pundits will emphasis Capablanca activating his queenside majority:

I've been studying and playing Alekhine's Defence lately and lost a game I'm ashamed to say to the anemic 2d3 variation. So I got to my ridiculous embarrassingly large chess library and look at what the pundits are saying. I notice that the preferred method seems to be to invite a reversed Hanham varation, but John Cox mentions a game between Thomas and Alekhine, mentioned in"My System" and in Alekhine's anthology.

Here it is:

So Thomas who must be one of the most prolific losers to appear in the games of early twentieth century world champions loses a game well won by Alekhine.

So. Going back to the McDonald book thinking how Thomas was always a whipping boy, the NEXT GAME I come across is a win of HIS given in "Chess Fundamentals". (Serendipity ?) Not a great win and Capablanca does castigates him for not organising the correct pawn break.

I love your reversed Paulsen

The d4 break gets in much sooner since black can't clamp down on d4 as fast or effectively. 

Thanks for the comments fellas. I spent some time writing it and am glad it's appreciated.