BtM 22A: Beyond material
April 1988, Position B
White to play
Vaganyan - Kouatly, Marseille 1987
Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move.
Scroll down to see some commentary from me and the Masters’ feedback.
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"A tricky position" says CHESS editor Paul Lamford. Particularly so for me.
White is an exchange and a couple of pawns up but against that there’s a severe development problem and the queen is in danger of being trapped. It’s the kind of thing that leaves me thinking I'm worse regardless of which side of the board I might be sitting.
I’ve often struggled with Beat the Masters’ positions where material imbalance is a central theme (BtM 3; BtM 14). It isn’t a new thing. I once spent a year looking at exchange sacrifices ending up no further forward in my understanding of such positions than when I started.
The problem is obvious. As beginners to we have to learn the table of piece values to give us any hope of playing the game. We become club and tournament players and know full well that 'it all depends on the position' but by then 1,3,3,5,9 has become so deeply ingrained it’s extremely difficult to give up*.
To progress we have to reject what brought us to where we are.
I confess I hadn’t heard of Davorin Kuljasevic before, but maybe his book Beyond Material could help. Or van Delft’s, McDonald’s or Suba’s.
Does anybody have any of these in their library? Or do you have any other tips for moving on from an over-reliance on the basic material values?
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POINTS
10: b4
5: b3, d4
2: Bd3, Bb5
1: Ne2
MASTERS
b4: Kosten, P. Littlewood, Norwood, Levitt, Howell, Pein, J. Littlewood, Horner, S. Arkell
b3: K. Arkell, Fidelity Mach 2
d4: Flear, Conquest
SOURCE
12 b4, Vaganian - Kouatly, Marseille 1987
* After writing this paragraph I found a sample of Beyond Material that makes a very similar point in a very similar way.
From the comments to the position post: I went for Bb5 and Adam wanted to play Nb5 - neither particularly successful. None of the masters mention either of these moves.
ReplyDeleteThose quoted in favour of 1 b4, the 10-pointer, aren’t massively specific.
E.g.
LEVITT: "1 b4: The Qh8 is trapped and White must meet the threat of ... Nd7 and ... 0-0-0 and ... Bg7"
[So far so good - JMGB]
"Just looking at White’s options and comparing them it is clear 1 b4 is best ..."
[It is?]
" ... without knowing at all what’s going on overall (I think I prefer White)."
and
HOWELL
"1 b4. A suitably violent move in a position where White’s queen is about to be trapped."
Just coming off a run of night shifts, btw. I’ll put up some notes about my thought process for this position when my brain kicks back in.
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