Beat the Masters 39 (Beat the Amateurs I)

 December 1988, Position G

White to play

Today's position is a little different to every other Beat the Masters I've published so far.

Contributions to the comments box are welcome. Masters’ feedback will be published tomorrow.

As well as contributions from the great and the good, you're also going to get the thoughts of a select group of amateur chessers - i.e. a bunch of my mates who agreed to be roped in to this experiment.

The amateurs panel for BtM 39 is made up of:-

Angus and Justin: mates of mine from Streatham Chess Club. Justin and I wrote for the Streatham Chess Blog for many years. Angus was a neighbour until I moved to a different part of London in 2019.

Phil: Chess coach and one third of The Chess Pit podcast

Matt: @WMILTTI. We were once of similar strength trying to get to 180 ECF. He's now better than me.

All four are longterm (i.e. decades) club and tournament players with elos in the range of 2100 to 2200.

Their responses to the positions set were very different. For example Matt gave himself a maximum of 20 minutes thought each time, simulating an over-the-board game. Phil, on the other hand, treated things more along the lines of "what if I got this in online blitz or rapid?"

You'll see what they have to say tomorrow.