Friday, 26 May 2017

Capablanca's two part rule

Very early on I learned that you should put your pawns on the opposite coloured square to your bishop (if you have one). Later I learned that this was known as "Capablanca's Rule". However it was only recently that I read that there are in fact two parts two this rule, and I'd probably been throwing away half points by not knowing the second part.
The second part deals with the case where your opponent has a bishop, and you don't. In this case you should put your pawns on the same coloured squares as your opponents bishop, to restrict its activity. Of course there are almost always other factors at play, but if you are faced with a knight v bishop middlegame and are unsure what to do, this may help.
Here is an example game (taken from'Techniques of Positional Play ' by Broznik and Terekhin), where Capablanca applies his own rule on move 20, creating a pawn chain on the dark squares. By the time the players agreed to a draw, all of black's pawns were on dark squares, white's pawns were on light squares, and yet the white bishop still couldn't help white win.

Lasker,Emanuel - Capablanca,Jose Raul [C66]
New York New York (2), 17.03.1924

Start positionPrevious MoveNext MoveEnd positionPlay movesStop playing
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 d6 4. d4 Bd7 5. Nc3 Nf6 6. O-O exd4 7. Nxd4 Be7 8. b3 Nxd4 9. Qxd4 Bxb5 10. Nxb5 Nd7 11. Ba3 a6 12. Nc3 Bf6 13. Qe3 O-O 14. Rad1 Bxc3 15. Qxc3 Re8 16. Rfe1 Rc8 17. Qh3 Ne5 18. Bb2 Qg5 19. Qg3 Qxg3 20. hxg3 f6 21. f3 Kf7 22. g4 h6 23. Re2 Nc6 24. Kf2 Re7 25. Bc3 a5 26. Rd5 b6 27. a4 Re6 28. Rd1 Rce8 29. Red2 Ke7 30. Ke3 Kd7 1/2-1/2

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