Friday, 23 September 2016

Refactoring your openings

A lot of the players PNG faced at the Olympiad were a bit of an unknown quantity, which made opening preparation a little difficult. When I did have a large set of games for an opposing player, it was often because they were experienced 2300+ players, and opening prep would only go so far.
One game where it did work was Rupert Jones's game against Enrico Grassi from San Marino. It did help that the two players were of similar vintage and activity, and in fact had played in the 1986 Olympiad, when Jones was representing Botswana.
Oddly enough both played the Centre-Counter with black, so there was plenty of material to work with. In the end Rupert and I decided to go with an opening idea that had been used by another PNG player in the 2002 Olympiad. Alan Luga (also a past PNGCF President) was shown an attacking idea in the Centre-Counter by GM Ian Rogers (IIRC), where White plays Bc4, then d3. The idea is that the Black bishop usually ends up on f5 or g6, and after the normal d4, the c2 pawn is under threat. But with the pawn on d3, moves like Qe2 can be played with safety, and an attack on the kingside gets moving a little quicker.
We actually found the first 13 moves of the game on the morning of the round, but ran out of time to go that extra bit further. If we had we might have spotted that 14.Nxe6 is winning (14 ... fxe6 15.hxg5 followed by g6 is the main idea). Instead Rupert played the obvious recapture, but chaos ensured after Bxd3, with a queen versus wood middlegame where both players were not quite sure who was better.  In the end a 'tactical' draw was agreed, as this resulted in the match being drawn 2-2, and this seemed to come as a relief to both players.


Jones,Rupert (1851) - Grassi,Enrico (2049)
Baku Chess Olympiad | Open chess24.com (8.2), 10.09.2016

Start positionPrevious MoveNext MoveEnd positionPlay movesStop playing
1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. Bc4 Nf6 5. d3 c6 6. Bd2 Bf5 7. Qe2 e6 8. h3 Nbd7 9. g4 Bg6 10. h4 h6 11. Nd5 Qd8 12. Nf4 Bh7 13. g5 hxg5 14. hxg5 Bxd3 15. Rxh8 Bxe2 16. gxf6 Qxf6 17. Ngxe2 Qxb2 18. Bc3 Qxc2 19. Bd3 Qa4 20. Bxg7 O-O-O 21. Bc3 Bd6 22. Rxd8+ Kxd8 23. Ng2 Nc5 24. Bb1 b5 25. Ne3 Qh4 26. Bc2 b4 27. Bb2 a5 28. Rd1 Kc7 29. Rd4 Qh1+ 30. Kd2 Be5 31. Rc4 Bxb2 32. Rxc5 Kb6 33. Rg5 Qh4 1/2-1/2

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