Friday, August 28, 2009

The Board Beside Me II


Pablo Sarrio Bambo v Adrian Villuendas Valero, Aragón Individual Championship 2009, round five. Position after 4...Be6.

The position above appeared on board eleven after a few minutes play: I was sitting to White's left, playing on board twelve. My game began 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 c6 and I wondered briefly, before playing 3.c4, whether Black might try 3...dxc4 4.e3 Be6, which I'd noticed had been the opening of a recent annotated game in Chess Today. In fact Black played 3...e6 and I replied with 4.Qc2 but having had the variation in mind, I experienced some slight surprise when looking to my right and seeing that it had apparently appeared on the very next board.

In fact it hadn't, quite: Black had a knight on f6 and his pawn was still on c7, though whether the Be6 manoeuvre is more or less eccentric, in a QGA, than it is in a Slav, I couldn't say. Anyway, shortly my opponent embarked on a long think so I went for a wander to see what was going on elsewhere in the tournament hall. When I saw that it was my turn to move again, I came back, sat down and noticed that I was sitting next to this.


White was looking at the pawn on b5 as if trying to work out how it had got there. Black, for his part, had got up and walked away, possibly wishing to allow his opponent to suffer his embarrassment alone. White eventually put his queen on c2, waited for Black to come back to the board and resigned.

On my left, White never turned up at all: Black sat looking at the starting position for half an hour and then went home. Some try to play: others, perhaps, conclude that it is better not to play at all.

[Board beside me I]

10 comments:

Jonathan B said...

... Be6 is one of those 'beginner moves' that turn out to be harder to deal with than you think.

I face it quite often when playing blitz on the internet.

Tom Chivers said...

It's a shame ejh you weren't blogging the board beside you when a certain Robin Haldane was regularly sat beside you!

ejh said...

As indeed I may have mentioned in the first of the series...


JB: funny, I had exactly that discussion about Be6 with my friend Fernando, partly because we'd been talking earlier about internet chess, which I don't play. One small reason why I don't is that instead of playing proper chess people start playing for tricks ("trucos") which they're perfectly entitled to do if they want but which isn't much to do with OTB chess.

Or so I thought.

I have a feeling Basman once tried something similar against Hartston. This would be more than thrity years ago.

ejh said...

[Site "London"]
[Date "1977.08.26"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Hartston,William R"]
[Black "Basman,Michael J"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.d4 c6 2.Nf3 d5 3.c4 dxc4 4.e3 Be6 5.Nc3 Qa5 6.Bd2 Nd7 7.Be2 Ngf6 8.0-0 h6 9.e4 Qc7 10.Rc1 Rc8 11.b3 cxb3 12.axb3 Qb8 13.d5 Bg4 14.g3 g5 15.Nd4 Bh3 16.Re1 Ne5 17.f4 gxf4 18.Bxf4 Rg8 19.Qd2 h5 20.Nf3 Nfg4 21.Nxe5 Nxe5 22.Bxh5 Bg7 23.Kh1 Bf6 24.Qe2 Qd6 25.Bxf7+ Kxf7 26.Qh5+ Rg6 27.Qxh3 Rh8 28.Qf5 Nf3 29.Re2 Qa3 30.Rf2 Rxg3 31. Rcf1 Nd4 32.Qd7 Rxc3 33.Be5 Rf3 34.Bxf6 Kxf6 35.Rxf3+ Nxf3 36.Qf5+ Kg7 37.Qxf3 Qd6 38.Rg1+ 1-0

As you see, it's the Slav version rather than the QGA. I remember Hartston annotating and at one point saying that eventually he decided to forget about trying to win back the pawn...

Comment Moderator said...

[From Angie Baby]

I was going to make a similar comment to the following a few times in the past.
I do enjoy your Blog, but it is a Chat Room isn't it?
11 of the last 12 comments made have been by one of the correspondents, which is nothing out of the ordinary.
Has anyone else noticed this? Does anybody else care? I dont care that much, but could not resist pointing it out.
Also, how about an experiment. No
correspondent is allowed to make a comment for 2 weeks. Maybe we will
get some more interesting views from others.
The comments are pretty good, but it is the same people over and over again.

Angie baby

Jonathan B said...

I do enjoy your Blog, but it is a Chat Room isn't it?

Glad you like it Angie baby but it is a blog and not in fact a chat room.


No correspondent is allowed to make a comment for 2 weeks. Maybe we will
get some more interesting views from others.


Telling me I can't comment on articles written on my own blog is not likely to make me happy.

Do feel free to add more contributions to other posts though.

David said...

After 1.d4 c6 2.Nf3 d5 3.c4 dxc4 4.e3, isn't 4. ... Be6 pretty much the main line?

(My database has it played slightly more often than 4. ... b5 - and scoring rather better).

ejh said...

Yes it is, I think: the point is that 3...dxc4 is pretty unorthodox.

Anonymous said...

This post has probably saved my a point, considering it took me several minutes (without a board of course) to realise why white shouldn't play Ng5... ;)

Richard

Tom Chivers said...

It's interesting to me how often chess players in cyberspace write about the regulation of other chess players writing in cyberspace. About half the English Chess Forum consists of "you shouldn't have said x because of y", which then in turn generates a similar response.

But the internet is freer than a free country!