Friday
Dec242010
A Cute Winawer Trap
Friday, December 24, 2010 at 2:36PM
After the moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.a4 Qa5 8.Qd2 b6 9.Ba3
should Black play the strategically desirable 9...Ba6? What do you think (without running engines!)?
tagged Winawer French, traps in Openings, Tactics
Reader Comments (9)
After 10. Bb4 cxb4 11. cxb4 Bxf1 12. bxa5 Bxg2 Black gets 2 Bishops and a Rook for his Queen so it looks OK.
I don't believe I would. But then I wouldn't play 1...e6 since 2.c4 refutes it. At least that is what I read one time on a couple of blogs and heard in a video. Sort of.
Bb4 is a queenechtomy (always loved that, is it DM original?)
cute
@ RevK: It is, but the counter-trap is the real cuteness.
@ DaveM: Yep, "queenectomy" is my coinage, at least as far as I recall. But sometimes one hears something long ago, and it subliminally pops into one's mind much later. So if someone from my deep, distant past is the true originator (or its distributor), then I apologize for claiming credit!
@ sbb1cpa: That's some good old time stuff, Steve. But forgetting the (allegedly) missed opportunities, then what?
@ Phil: That's the right idea, though your count is overoptimistic. White will win the bishop on h1, resulting in approximate material and positional equality.
I saw trapping the queen quickly but missed black grabbing the rook. Nice. Just two days ago I was going over your analysis of the 2 c4 line to try out, but no one showed up a Book-a-Million last night.
My, that is cute. In light of the counter-trap Phil points out, I'm still looking for White to "make" the trap work (10. Ne2?)
Right, there's no way to make the trap work from White's point of view, so the trap is if anything one White falls into. That said, Black does need to keep a little sangfroid about him, which he did not do in the game Baghdasarayan (2348) - Khojayan (2219), Jermuk 2010. After 10.Bb4, he resigned!
Best play after 10.Bb4 seems to be something like this: 10...Bxf1 11.Bxa5 Bxg2 12.f3 Bxh1 13.Kf2 bxa5 14.Ne2 Bxf3 15.Kxf3 0-0. The computer claims it's about equal, but I think that unless White makes something happen on the kingside pretty quickly (which he might, at least for a perpet), Black will annihilate White's queenside and win.
Great find Dennis, I have benefited as Black from some of the trappy lines that are inherent with the Winewar, but this is a new to me. I always assumed that after Black plays the queen to a5 you should not play b6 to allow the queen to go back to c7 or d8 to avoid having it trapped. This gives me a new propective to the positions arising from Qa5.