Sunday, 24 January 2016

Your favourite move

Do you have a favourite move? By that I mean a move you like to play in many games (as opposed to that one game where your sacrificed your queen for mate). In answer to this question, some wags might answer 'checkmate!', but that's not quite the question I am asking.
For me it is the move Neg5 (or Neg4 if I am black). As mentioned here if I get to play this move, it is almost always because I have the big kingside attack going. And it also means I have not one, but two knights involved in the party.
Having spent a lot of the summer player bullet/blitz/10s chess with my son (and losing 75% of the time), he seems partial to g4/g5, especially early in the game. Although he has a far better positional understanding of the game than me, when g4 hits the board, it usually means he wishes to hack me off the board ("bringing the heat" he calls it). It does turn up in both the Keres Attack against the Sicilian, and the Shabalov-Shirov Gambit against the Semi-Slav, so it is a reasonably sound strategy.
To add to his collection of early g4/g5 openings, he can look at the following game from Tata Steel. Carlsen (as black) plays 10 ... g5 against Eljanov, although this is to drive the Bishop back. Eljanov actually gets in g4 a few moves later to stop any kingside shenanigans, but goes a bit to far with a speculative piece sacrifice. Although it gets him a lot of pawns, Carlsen regroups, cleans up the pawn mass, and happily reaches a winning ending.

Eljanov,Pavel (2760) - Carlsen,Magnus (2844) [E10]
78th Tata Steel GpA Wijk aan Zee NED (7.1), 23.01.2016

Start positionPrevious MoveNext MoveEnd positionPlay movesStop playing
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. g3 Bb4+ 5. Bd2 Be7 6. Bg2 O-O 7. O-O Nbd7 8. Qc2 Ne4 9. Bf4 c6 10. Nc3 g5 11. Be3 Nd6 12. b3 Nf5 13. g4 Nxe3 14. fxe3 b5 15. e4 b4 16. exd5 bxc3 17. dxc6 Nb8 18. Qe4 f5 19. gxf5 exf5 20. Qd5+ Qxd5 21. cxd5 Na6 22. Rac1 Nc7 23. Ne5 f4 24. Nc4 Rd8 25. Rxc3 Nxd5 26. c7 Nxc7 27. Bxa8 Nxa8 28. e3 Bb4 29. Rc2 Bb7 30. h4 Be4 31. Rh2 Nb6 32. Ne5 fxe3 33. hxg5 Rxd4 34. Ng4 Nd5 0-1

2 comments:

Graham Clayton said...

Unusual game - you don't see both players play g4/g5 by move 13.

Alana said...

f4 or f5 is mine - one or the other probably occurs in about 80% of my games!!