SC Week 5/2: van den Berg - Kramer, 1950 (Half-Open Files)
"The minority attack has a certain inevitability about it. Though cumbersome, once the mighty wheels have been set in motion, the opposition has no way to apply the breaks."
Michael Stean
Notes and Observations
The play is extremely similar to Arkell - JB from yesterday - and Kramer’s c6 pawn suddenly drops off just as mine did.
Familiar strategies:
White exploits the semi outpost on e5 (Outposts/7) but doesn’t ever occupy the full outpost on c5. Rb1-b7 is a manoeuvre familiar from Andersson - Knaak and Karpov - Uhlmann (Open Files)
Compare Black’s strategy with … a5 in Stean’s next game fragment. What difference does it make?
Black was simply blown away on the queenside by white's minority-attack and the infiltration of white's pieces. Ne5 and Rb7 were examples of that, plus there was still the pin by the bishop on g5/h4.
ReplyDeleteBlack got too passive and was unable to create tactical complications on the kingside. All white's pieces were active and he could simply target the weak c6-pawn with his rook and two (!) knights.
23. Qb1! was a nice last little showing of positional understanding. With that move white was threatening to trade black's most active piece, which also playing an important role in defending at the same time.
I noticed that by playing 14.. Ng7 black made Bf5 possible, but it stopped the possiblity of playing the pawn break ..c5!?, after axb5, because white can take on c5 and black cannot take back with his knight anymore. Maybe having kept this option would have been better for black to create counterplay?
I am curious to the ..a5 setup in the next game!