Tuesday
Aug302016
This Week's World Chess Column: Better Living Through Lost Tempi
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 2:20AM
In my column this week I take a look at some opening lines, but classic and contemporary, in which one side (always White, in the examples) makes a move that looks like an obvious, beginner-like tempo-waster (generally Bb5, in a position where the bishop is immediately or soon kicked by a Black pawn) turns out to be a clever way of obtaining an otherwise unavailable benefit. Some of you might find this old hat, but hopefully some readers will find this eye-opening, at least on account of the rich diversity of examples. (Feel free to add more in the comments - there were plenty more I omitted due to space limitations.)
Reader Comments (2)
It's remarkable that 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.f4 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bb5+ Bd7 6.Bc4 Nc6 7.d3 e6 8.O-O Nge7 9.Qe1 h6 hardly has been played. Compared to the famous game Anand-Gelfand, Wijk aan Zee 1996 Black might be better off with the bishop on d7.
Hi Dennis,
When I noticed awhile back that the 5 Bb5+ Bd7 6 Bc4 Grand Prix was bringing White good results and becoming trendy, I fed it to Houdini. It yawned and was completely unimpressed, giving evals of at least equal for Black. Maybe the positions aren't crunchy enough for the machine or its just to early to rely on what the computer thinks yet.
[DM: Computers yawn at everything, but in any case the Bf1-b5-c4 finesse is part of a longish plan, and the engine isn't going to be able to grasp and evaluate everything straight away. (This is especially true in positions where one side is building up an attack; it takes time before the threats show up, but once they do it can be too late to stop them. Anyway, I didn't claim that the idea gave White an edge, but only that it defused one of Black's main counters to the GPA.]
I do remember that the Gelfand game cited by MNb above with 9...h6 was supposed to be the cure for Black in this improved form of the Grand Prix, with the pure version (without 2...d6) being almost unplayable for White.