Why?

[Edit: Forgot to include this originally ... don't forget tonight's the night of the chess club quiz. Kick-off at 7:45pm at the usual venue in Woodfield Grove. See you there.]

Today's position arose in game twelve of the 1958 Botvinnik - Smyslov match and then again more recently in the somewhat less exalted circumstances of my game for the S&BCC London League 2nd team against Athenaeum earlier this month.

My opponent played 11. ... Re8, to my eyes an eminently sensible move, but Smyslov, and if you weren't already familiar with the game the arrow is a bit of a clue, retreated his Bishop.

I know this is not an uncommon manoeuvre in this line, see the near identical positions below, and (I think) I understand the general point ... the Bishop is a bit exposed on f5, potentially vulnerable to Nf3-d4 or perhaps e2-e4 at some point so tucking it away safely on h7 removes it from danger. What I'm totally unable to grasp is why he needs to do it at this precise moment.

OK, the Reti is hardly the kind of opening where every tempo is crucial but consider Petrosian - Furman, 1975, which after Smyslov's retreat continued,

12. Bc3 Re8, 13. Qb2 Bd6

and now White played 14. Ne5 ("!" - Ray Keene *) blocking the advance of the e-pawn. Had Black not played the Bishop retreat first, of course, White wouldn't have got there in time.

So why 11. ... Bh7? Am I missing something or is Black just fannying around?

Capablanca - Lilienthal, 1936



Nikitin - Goldenov, 1965



Smyslov - Keres, 1951

* BTW: I found all the material for today's post in Ray Keene's Flank Openings - a book unlike a lot of RDK's output in that it's pretty useful.

Quick update

Do you remember the Brixton speed chess player, about whom we wrote last month, claiming to be a Jamaican speed chess champion raising money to go and visit his ailing father?

We can provide you with more recent news. He was spotted the other day - in Cardiff. Last year (see the video in the previous post) he was in Edinburgh - this year, he's been seen in London and Cardiff. I wonder whether he tours the whole of Britain, or just the various capitals? Does he do day-trips to Paris and Brussels?

I wonder, too - how long he has been doing this? Is his father actually ill? How good is he? Somebody, surely, must recognise him. So - who is he really?

Old in Chess IV

Back in the day most chess players were banged out of their nuts on drugs. Look at these two hippies - they're so out of it they haven't even noticed they're playing two games on a single board ... and the one on the left is about to snort a bishop.

Photo from: New In Chess 1993/5

Scorebook Notes V

[English grandmaster Geoff Scorebook writes a regular column for the Streatham and Brixton blog. Geoff is well-known as a hardworking professional and a regular on the European club and tournament circuit.]

Who'd be an author? I have a book coming out soon, or maybe I don't, having had a rather terse meeting at the publishers' office the other day. I should have known something was up when they invited me into the office to "have a chat about your manuscript" instead of just sending me an email like they normally do.

Well, they showed me into the office and we chatted about the weather and the Hertfordshire Congress - I finished just out of the prizes - for about thirty seconds before my editor - I'll call him Ed for the sake of anonymity - mentioned with his head towards my manuscript, which he had in front of him on his desk. "Anyway, Geoff", he said, "your MS. Ah....interesting."

I wasn't sure I liked "interesting" - it's a word grandmasters say about moves they think are bad but not having yet worked out precisely why. "You think so?" I replied, rather than ask him directly what he meant.

"Mmm, yes," he said. "Winning with the Queen's Gambit Declined. Well, I can't say you're not an....ah....optimist. Still, we have to be as professional chessplayers, don't we?"

To the best of my knowledge Ed last played a serious game of chess in the Blackpool Open about four years ago and lost to a local club player, after which he was heard saying, very loudly, in the nearest pub, that that was it for him, as he could make more money watching other people play than he could make playing himself - a reminiscence I thought it best not to discuss at that particular moment. "Yeah", I laughed instead, "if we weren't optimists we might as well give up, mightn't we?"

He gave me an odd look for some reason and then shook his head as if trying to dislodge something he'd misheard. "Ah, yeah. Right. Well....the...er.... book. That is your final draft, isn't it?"

You cheeky bastard, I almost said, but did not. No, I thought I'd send you a half-finished version for a laugh, I almost said, but did not.

"Er....yes", I actually said. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, certain....ah...eccentricities in your....ah...approach", Ed replied. I wished he'd come to the point, but he always did fart around too much when you should have been decisive, that's why he couldn't make his living playing chess.

I inclined my head, inviting him to explain what he meant. "Well....for instance", he continued, flicking through the pages, "specifically, here on page...29. You write this whole variation needs more research".

"Well, so it does", I said. "Most variations need more research when you think about it. That's what I do. I research them."

"Mmmm.....yes," he replied. "But I don't seem to actually...see any of it here. Let me give you another example. Here on page 53, you write: readers will find it rewarding to carry out their own analysis."

"And so they will", I said,. "They'll learn more from getting off their lazy arses and doing some work themselves than they'll ever get just from reading what somebody else has written."

"Yes, I don't...doubt it", said Ed. "But that does...ah...raise the question as to why they should actually bother reading what 'somebody else' - specifically...ah, you - has written. Not that you...ah, have, or not that much, anyway. Besides, sitting on their lazy, mmm, arses, is what they actually want to do. Not to mention what this...ah, company would like them to do. Needs them to do, in fact."

I raised my eyebrows, not too offensively. "Look, Ed", I said. "I'm just starting them off. Pointing them in the right direction. You know, give a man a fish and he eats today, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime."

"Yes, I see", Ed said. "Brain food, isn't it, fish? And they're certainly going to have to do a lot of...er...fishing themselves." He flicked through the manuscript again. "Another...ah....thing. We've been compiling the game index for the back. Something very...ah...strange."

"Go on", I said, examining the ceiling.

"Well, it's an....eh...interesting cast of names..."

"Yeah", I said, "I've got Kamsky, Kramnik, Botvinnik, Petrosian, everybody really."

"Well, not quite...ah, everybody. Hamlet, but no prince. Specifically, no Scorebook. The narrator is absent. Like in Proust, ha ha."

"But I don't play the Queen's Gambit Declined," I said. "I'd rather play almost anything else. I'd rather play the sodding Benoni."

"Mmm, yes, I know" he said again, pressing his fingertips together. "Which makes it all the more...ah...strange that you take the opposite approach in this....manuscript", he said, leaning heavily on the last word, presumably to make it clear that he had deliberately not said book. "We have a collection of...mmmm...lines that you do not play, suggestions that...you do not analyse and games in which you, eh, do not....appear."

"Well," I said, cheerfully, "I wouldn't want to give away all my best ideas, would I?"

"No...mmm...apparently you would not", he said. "Although you do appear to have just, ah...given something away".

And after that he said a few things, not all of them polite, one of which was that his firm were not Everyman and didn't put out just anything provided most of the page numbers were in the right order. And that, ah, specifically, if I wanted to be paid anything on top of my initial advance I would have to, ah, produce something, ah, different, something ah, better, and something ah, soon.

So for the last couple of weeks your correspondent has been sitting at home with his computer and his chess set, trying to whip up winning chances in unplayed lines that are unplayed for good reasons. Still, at least it's original analysis. Very original analysis. If it were any more original I'd be making it up as I went along.

Who'd be a grandmaster?

Geoff

Bridge Too Far?

"Incidentally," wrote ejh in response to an unusual sartorial query aimed our way from chess-blog demigod Edwin Meyer, "are people really discussing smart clothing on a chess site? Is this a first?"

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But the world of Bridge has certainly been discussing what to wear, since players of the game have been told officially to smarten up their act, reports the BBC:

Bridge... is to get a new behaviour policy to clamp down on rowdiness and unsuitable attire.

The English Bridge Union is planning to introduce the national policy in a bid to tidy up players.

Top British and European player Tony Forrester supported the policy, saying that clothing did affect play.

He criticised men of all ages who attended tournaments "in shorts, smelly T-shirts, sandals, no socks".

Does chess need smartening up too?

"The best game I've ever played"

- that's how Streatham & Brixton Chess Club's Alan Hayward described his win on Tuesday night in the Surrey League against Coulsdon's Marcus Osborne. And so here at the blog, we're very happy to present the sacrificial slugfest in question:




Alan also kindly provided some notes, writing of 8...Bxc3+ that Marcus "is Graded 18 points higher than me and when he gave up his fianchettoed bishop, I thought I've got a chance of winning today", and after 14...Nxe5: "There always seems to be a little bit of luck in a lot of games I win and I thought I had a good game sacrificing a Pawn , but after 15 Bf4 nxc4 I did not realise I would be 2 Pawns down"!

Which makes me wonder. What's the best game you've ever played? (And would you like to see it published on the blog?)

A logical explanation

Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers - but creative artists very seldom. I am not attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

Thus spake GK Chesterton. Was he on to something? It seems to me that there is some strength to what he says, even if it is not logic as such that's to blame, but its applicability to chess and its inadequacy in the face of chess. It's the capacity of chess both to be reducible to logic in principle and to be beyond it in principle: part of the obsessive, addictive quality of chess is in the contrast between the near-infinity of variations, on the one hand, and their simplicity, their closeness, on the other.


Everything is there. Nothing is hidden. The pieces are small in number, and extremely limited in their powers. These are exactly defined and completely understood. Nothing is hidden - potentially, everything can be found. Yet not everything can be calculated, not because it is out of reach but because it is out of human reach.

The more one reaches, the more it is out of reach: and the greater one's reach, the more this is true. The more you know, the closer you get, but the more you know, the more you realise you don't know. A little learning is a dangerous thing, but not, perhaps, quite so dangerous as a lifetime's.

If it were simply about imagination, creativity, the problem wouldn't arise: the boundaries would be non-existent, the possibilities limitless. It's precisely because the chessboard is so small and the pieces so circumscribed, that there is a problem. The logician grasps the problem and the method: and being a logician, they know that a solution, logically, is there. But as they have no way of arriving at it, it's a sequence with a beginning but no end. That's the trap: that's what brings on obsession. And obsession brings on madness.

Do enjoy the festive season.

"Un pueblo abierto"

Last week saw Zaragoza play host to the individual championship of Aragón, and what I'd like to do is present you with some kind of report. I shall, however, not be doing so, since, in a mean-spirited action which still has me spitting blood several months after I first heard of it, the Aragonese Chess Federation decided to change its rules this year - and, in an act of official discrimination just about as blatant as can be imagined, excluded non-Spaniards from taking part in the competition.

Hence, although I live and work in Aragón, although I am a member of the Federation and pay no less for the privilege than anybody else, I am not permitted to play in its championship. I live here, but I do not belong here. I am an outsider. I am persona non grata.

This is not, as I have said, some ancient tradition, understandable but sadly in need of modernisation in the 21st century. This is new. This is a rule change made this year. Somebody had to think it up, to pass it at a meeting and to write it down, to ask what impact it would have and decide that if anybody was affected by it, if anybody was unhappy about it, it didn't matter. Somebody had to decide that it was all right to discriminate.

Note that this is not a national championship, but a regional one. It is not the championship of Spain, but the championship of Aragón. There might be a case for restricting entry to Aragonese players, for sure, though even then one might wonder if it would be more civilised, more inclusive, to include those who had been resident in Aragón for a certain period. I could understand that. But that is not the case. You can be Galician, Cantabrian, Extremeduran, Andalusian, Catalonian or what you will. You do not have to live in Aragón, which I do. That's OK. But live here and be a foreigner - and no matter what contribution you make to Aragonese life, the door is barred. And you're supposed to be all right with that.

What's the reason? Ostensibly, the reason is that the competition is a qualifier for the Spanish championship, which does have the sort of entry restrictions I mention above. Uh-huh. Except that, as everybody knows, in those circumstances all you have to do is restrict the qualifying places to people who are qualified. As happens in all sorts of competitions, in chess and other sports. You don't have to restrict entry to the whole qualifying competition. You only do that if you want to.

Why am I so angry about this? Well, perhaps you have to have been on the wrong end of discrimination to understand it, but basically, as I say, I live here. I am not transient. I moved here and I moved here in order to stay here. This is supposed to be my home. But home is a place where you belong. It is not a place where the doors are slammed against you. If they are, then you can never belong and it can never be home. And I am angry about that. I'm angry about the sheer needlessness of it and the sheer bloody stupidity involved. Why on earth should it be hard, why should it be a struggle, just to play chess?

Because chess is everyday life. It's not a difficult social issue involving housing shortages or health services or political rights. It's everyday life. You cannot bar people from everyday life. You cannot say that people may not come into this or that bar or that they cannot enter this or that shop or that they may not enter your chess tournament. And if you do any of those things, they are going to be angry about it and they are going to have an opinion about the people who do it. You exclude, you discriminate, when you absolutely have to. And not otherwise.

When I first heard about this rule change I wrote to the secretary of the Federation to say how upset I was. We then had a short exchange of emails, which, whatever its intention, made me angrier than before. It wasn't just being told that it wasn't "personal" (nor was it "personal" when the State of Alabama decreed that people should rink at separate water fountains). It was being told the following:

puedo decirle que Aragón es un pueblo abierto y hospitalario y los ajedrecistas aragoneses tambien

"I can tell you that Aragon is an open and hospitable place and Aragonese chessplayers are the same".

Now, in the circumstances, I don't know quite what to make of that. But I do know that there are words for people who discriminate and there are also words for people who say one thing while they are doing the opposite. And if this rule-change is not reversed, I am inclined, very soon, to start using them.

Chess, The Theatre, A Hospital - and, Photographs.

Remember this - The Chess Players, a chess-based theatre performance in St George's Hospital, Tooting, that ran early November? And that also featured games between Streatham and Brixton Chess Club members and the staff, patients and visitors of the hospital? Well, we not only have our First Team Captain's rather amusing account of his loss (!) to a passerby at the event, but some intriguing photographs that I'm sure will make every reader wish they'd been there to see the real thing.

First, the photographs:































And here's what happened to Captain Martin Smith:

"A random passer-by was inveigled in to playing my good self. After we had sat down he began explaining that he was writing a book on how to generate and solve Sudoku puzzles that would have unique solutions. He'd written his own computer programme and wondered how he could get a publisher. I pinched myself and mentally checked whether St.George's had a psychiatric wing. He then explained he was also planning to write a chess programme based on control of squares, ignoring tactical considerations completely (more pinching and reality check). He'd stopped active playing five or so years ago when he was with Hayes chess club graded 135 or so. He then wheeled out a pretty decent Scheveningen Sicilian a la Kasparov and out played me positionally before finishing off with some pretty back rank tactics. Smith 0 – 1 Random Passer-by."

Now then, do any captions for the photographs suggest themselves to our readers? And finally - thanks to Sarah of Lightning Ensemble for the photographs.

Anyone for 20 Seconds Chess? How about £2,000?

What do we want from a chess tournament in London? Big prizes, exciting format, proper sponsorship, an attractive venue, media-savvy website - all the kinds of things that might excite players & intrigue outsiders?

Well then, how about Twenty Seconds Chess: a one-day speed event with a first prize of two thousands pounds, consisting of group stages followed by a knockout, sponsored by Lexmark, held at Bush Hall - an ornate venue better known for hosting rock concerts?

What else should you know? Perhaps that the event was conjured up in association with the English Chess Federation - an organisation sometimes maligned for not pursuing such dynamic ventures? That more events appear to be planned, according to the website? That the 2 points for a win, half for a draw scoring system might have learnt a lesson or two from football? (As with the "FA Cup Style" pairings, one supposes.) That the event is held on Saturday 19th January 2008? That there are 300 places available to players? That in the knockout stage, four "very special guest players" join the competition?

So, how do you fancy your chances?

The Interesting French Exchange II

Geoff Scorebook is away.

I'm happy to dispel rumours that,
(a) his canoe has been found floating in the Thames;
(b) we at S&BCC Blog have cashed in his life insurance policy and are preparing to head off to a new life in Panama.

Fear not. Mr. Scorebook will be back next week.

In the meantime, back to the French Exchange.

Often when books talk about Black being able to win against 3. exd5 it's in the context of some kind of long ... slow ... grind, exploiting every small advantage that comes along. Gurevich-Short, Manilla 1990, as mentioned on the blog a few weeks ago, is a good example of this kind of approach.

However, as Andrew mentioned in the comments to the initial post, the variation can often degenerate into a opposite sides castling and a mutual hack against the enemy king.

For example:-

Now where did I leave that Spanish phrasebook?

Knight to the rescue - the answer

Wednesday's position was taken from a correspondence game Horton-Townsend, IECG 2007, concluded earlier this week.


The answer was that the move 1...Ng5+ - 41...Ng5+, in the actual game - does not, in fact, save Black. My opponent thought it might: so did I, at first, which is why I had intended 40.Qe3 (which also wins) rather than 40.Qd6 as played.

The remarkable reason (which may or may not have been given in Wednesday's comments box by now - I'm on holiday in the Basque Country and prepared this posting in advance) occurs in the position after 40...Nf7 41.Qe7 Ng5+ 42.Kg4 Nxe6 43.fxe6! Rxf4+


Now, although any capture leads to a draw by perpetual check (beginning 44.Kxf4 Qd4+ or 44.gxf4 Qg2+) 44.Kh3!!! is an extraordinary winning move: see the game below or, better, work out the variations yourself first.

(I was particularly pleased with the win: I've now gone ten games without defeat in competitive email play and may be close to winning a tournament outright for the very first time. After something like eight years of trying.)

The Interesting French Exchange

The Most Boring S&BCC Blog Post Ever?

Three short draws in the Exchange French ...

Hort-Petrosian, Hastings 1977/78
1. e4 e6, 2. d4 d5, 3. exd5 exd5, 4. Bd3 Bd6, 5. c3 c6, 6. Ne2 Ne7, 7. Bf4 O-O, 8. O-O Bf5, 9. Bxd6 Qxd6, 10. Ng3 Bxd3, 11. Qxd3 Nd7, 12. Nd2 1/2 - 1/2



Seidman - R. Byrne, USA Ch. 1959
1. e4 e6, 2. d4 d5, 3. exd5 exd5, 4. Bd3 Nc6, 5. c3 Bd6, 6. Ne2 Qh4, 7. Na3 a6, 8. Qd2 Nge7, 9. Nc2 Bf5, 10. Bxf5 Nxf5, 11. Qg5 1/2-1/2



V. Malisauskas (2530) - Gausel. E (2485), Norway 1992
1. e4 e6, 2. d4 d5, 3. exd5 exd5, 4. Nf3 Bg4, 5. Be2 Bd6, 6. c3 c6, 7. O-O Ne7, 8. Re1 O-O, 9. Ne5 Bxe2, 10. Qxe2 Ng6, 11. Nxg6 hxg6, 12. Nd2 Nd7, 13. Nf3 Re8, 14. Qxe8+ Qxe8, 15. Rxe8+ Rxe8, 16. Bd2 Nf6, 17. Re1 Rxe1+, 18. Nxe1 1/2-1/2



You can play through these games below if you think you can stand the excitement.

It's not difficult to see why the French Exchange has a reputation for extreme dullness when it's so easy to find examples like these (I got them from MCO XIV, an Andy Martin tape from Basman's Audio Chess series, and a quick search of ChessBase respectively).

Still, over the next little while I'm going to have a go at saving the variation's honour. I've started with these games just to show I'm not totally deranged and I do understand that games in this line can easily have little content - if that's what both players want.

CJS Purdy once wrote,

"Many French Defence players fear the Exchange Variant because it has the reputation of being terribly drawish. I need not waste space on that idea, and you'll see why later on."

Well, I think idea is worth spending some time on. Unfortunately, the interesting bit starts next time.

Knight to the rescue?

White to play: Black's last move was a knight retreat from e5 to f7, attacking the queen.

If White plays 1.Qe7 can Black save the day with 1...Ng5+, e.g. 2.Kg4 Nxe6 3.fxe6 Rxf4+?

The Way To Do It...

It's Streatham and Brixton Chess Club first teamer John Carlin who is white to play in the diagram position today, pitted against Peter Taylor in our recent London League Division 1 clash against Cavendish Firsts.

See if you can find the spectacular move that effectively won the game for white, and thus helped us achieve the slimmest of victories on the night, the match finishing 6½-5½ to us. You can also play through the whole of this thumping miniature, and thus find the solution to this puzzle, at the bottom of this post.

Rope-a-dope

I was nosing through Edward Winter's marvelous Kings, Commoners and Knaves the other day when I came across this rather wonderful game.




Small reward available for anybody willing to play this opening against Wood Green on Wednesday.

Old in Chess III

Short-Kramnik, Amsterdam 1993

"... in the middle of the night Short suddenly woke up and started to wonder why on earth Kramnik had resigned in the final position. His nocturnal brain-racking did not yield any clues. Kramnik's explanation the next morning was a little more helpful: 'Because I was stupid'. More amazed than amused Short kept searching for a waterproof winning method. Whether he found it, as he suggested several times, or not, as others claimed several times is only partly relevant."

Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam

"I was somewhat surprised by Kramnik's decision to throw in the towel, but I was too embarrassed to reveal my ignorance at not having seen the path to victory."

Nigel Short

New in Chess 1993/5

Pawn squares

Although I don't have the exact quote to hand, Viktor Korchnoi once explained why he didn't play the King's Indian with reference to Soviet military tactics in the battle of Stalingrad - or possibly the siege of Leningrad, which he lived through as a boy. He compared the rush of Black's kingside pawns to the way in which soldiers of the Red Army would rush across no man's land in the face of unremitting fire, hoping that the survivors would overwhelm the enemy guns.

I was reminded of this recently when playing through a game Sengupta-Safin, Sangli 2000, while looking at certain lines in the Exchange Spanish in connection with a current correspondence game. On move 22 Black moved a pawn from c7 to c6 and thereby managed to create an unusual pawn formation: the pawn square.


If Korchnoi was reminded of the Second World War, I'm put in mind of all those squares of soldiers at the battle of Waterloo: or maybe of the defensive formation of Roman legionnaries, the testudo (tortoise) which proved so successful against everybody except Asterix. I'm also reminded a little of the famous knight square from the thirteenth Kasparov-Short game in 1993. But maybe what works with the infantry isn't what works with the cavalry.

It looks potentially very effective to me: the pawns mutually defended and lots of squares attacked. Are there any other examples of the pawn square from recent (or other) grandmaster practice? Might it come to vie with the Irish Pawn Centre in the popular imagination?

Geoffrey Scorebook Is Unwell

Unfortunately we will not have any Scorebook Notes this weekend: Geoff informs us that he went down with a nasty cold a couple of days after being caught in the rain and cannot do anything except sit in bed and watch old Foxy Openings videos. Next week, if he recovers, he is off for a short holiday in the sun (or so he says) but we hope to have him back with us in a fortnight.

Goring, Goring Arsenal

I am fairly sure that proper chessplayers do not do their opening preparation while watching the football on the box. I, however, do: why not multitask when you have the chance, that's how I see it.

So on Tuesday evening I settled down to watch the second half of the Sevilla-Arsenal game with a cat on my lap, a pocket chess set in my hand and a few useful books (notably Emms and Kaufman) within reach should the cat permit. Now I'm not so foolish to think that this is the ideal environment for studying the main lines, but I saw no reason not to have a look at the Goring Gambit just in case anybody ever thinks it's worth a pop against my 1...e5.

I'm not so good at studying openings using a book: inevitably I get sidetracked, not necessarily by the football but by asking what if? questions. Which is what you're supposed to do, actually, but the trouble is that I start asking them at the first opportunity and then never actually get on to the part where you learn some of the lines you wanted to learn. In truth the normal outcome is that I decide the variation I want to play has a big problem with it and start preferring the line for the other side.

So it was on Tuesday. The players were barely out of the dressing-room and the pieces barely set up: I was looking at the position after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.c3 dxc3 5.Nxc3 Bb4.


Now I remembered from earlier perusals that White normally plays 6.Bc4 and although 6...d6 is often played, both Emms and Kaufman recommend 6...Bxc3+ 7.bxc3 d6, on the grounds that if 6...d6 7.Qb3 Bxc3+ White can take with the queen instead.

All right, I thought, while registering the fact that Arsenal had had a penalty turned down. Suppose White plays the same game and switches his move-order to try and avoid Black's idea? Suppose the queen comes out first and White plays 6.Qb3.


Now if 6...d6 7.Bc4 and you've got the position Emms and Kaufman wanted Black to avoid. But neither of them mentions this move-order, so is there anything obvious for Black in this position? Nothing I could see, not with one eye on the telly anyway, so I started asking myself if Black had a useful alternative to 6...d6 - what might he gain by White playing the queen out so early? And after a few minutes I came up with the answer: 6...Qe7.


Now of course if White puts his f1 bishop on the desired square 7.Bc4 we have 7...Na5 since if 8.Bxf7+ Kf8 seems to win a piece. Excellent! But let's ask the question again - can White do something different? By now I was really rocking and it wasn't long before I came up with the idea of leaving the f1 bishop where it was and trying 7.Bd2! instead.


Because now if 7...Bxc3+ we can play 8.Bxc3 and then if 8...Qxe4+ 9.Be2 and surely White has compensation for two pawns with the king and queen lined up like that.

So Black probably plays 7...Nf6 and then, get in! White has 8.O-O-O!


and you have a position I'm sure Robin Haldane would love to play. Well, I thought, there's a nice bit of original theoretical work for you, and I put the set aside so that the pussycat and I could relax and watch Sevilla coasting to victory in greater comfort.

In the morning, of course, I took another look and realised that my reputation as a theoretician probably needs to rest on rather stronger foundations than a few minutes' freethinking in the company of a cat and the Champions' League.

I was, after all, supposed to be studying this from the Black point of view, and half the reason I play 1...e5 is that a lot of people like to play stupid gambits in which they give up their centre pawns for practically no compensation, provided the Black player has a bit of experience and knows how to go about exchanging off White's short-term activity.

So, among other objections, 6...Bxc3+ 7.Qxc3 Nf6 looks perfectly adequate (we should get ...d5 in rather than ...d6) or indeed 6....Nf6 with the same idea. And no doubt a short visit to the computer screen would teach me rather more about this deeply unsound variation than I actually learned while watching the television.

Still, it might, as they often write, be good for a blitz game. And it's better than spending 45 minutes watching some football match that I'm not actually all that interested in. God yes. The day when I have absolutely nothing better to do than watch the Champions' League is still some way off.