SC Week 3/4: Hutchings - Keene, Woolacombe 1973 (Weak Pawns)
"Black is not doubling White’s f-pawns in order to attack them, but to create an outpost for his knight on d4 "
Michael Stean
Notes and Observations
6 Bd2, 7 a3, 9 Qc2 White avoids doubled pawns (temporarily) at the cost of losing a lot of time making unproductive moves.
16 … Rb3, 18 … Nd4 Outposts! This game could just as easily have appeared in the second chapter, or in week 5 for that matter. Positional concepts work together and not in isolation.
19 … h5 White isn’t able to prevent … Rhb8 so Keene takes the opportunity to make a clever preparatory move, looking to loosen up White’s kingside.
Reminder
Karpov - Browne, San Antonio 1972, referenced by Stean in his notes to this game, is an important one to know - also from an outpost point of view.
Yes, I think the game is a very nice combination of different themes. By creating the doubled pawn he does created an excellent outpost! My notes:
ReplyDelete- I find it an interesting notion that the g2-setup is not so effective against the Nimzo, since it leave the c4-pawn vulnerable. This makes sense, but as a Nimzo player myself this is nice to realize.
- White has wasted a lot of time with it's pieces in preventing to get doubled c-pawns. This also does allow black to move his knight from f6 earlier on in the position
- 10… Qf6 is a very strong move as it both attacks the pawn on d4 an extra time plus 'postionally pins' the d4-pawn as well, beacause the tripling of pawn after dxc5 is pretty undesirable
- A very cool idea: with Bxf3 black creates a beautiful outpost for his knight on d4, since the white pawn is already on c4! That's the advantage of a bishop attacking a knight that the possibility of changing the pawn structure is always in the air and the player with the bishop can decide when to do this!
- I think I was vaguely aware that doubled pawns also higher the risk of giving away outpost, but this concept of on purpose trading the bishop for the knight to get the outpost is really learnful to see in practice!
- With 16… Rb3 black penetrates the position and makes use of another outpost.
- 19… h5 is an interesting move as it threatens to take space on the kingside with h4-h3 and weakens the g3-pawn, creating the threat of taking there with Rxg3 and after fxg3 picking up the the unprotected bishop on g2 with interest.
- The final blow 22… threatening mate on b1 is a neat finish. It shows the perfect infiltration by the black pieces and the active rooks playing on the weaknesses combined with the suberb knight on d4 simply create too many threats.