SC Week 6/4: Petrosian - Yuchtman, USSR Championship 1959 (Black squares and White squares)

 "Before the endgame God made the middlegame and an opening to lead into it."

Michael Stean

Notes and Observations

8 Bg5 Petrosian’s opening strategy is based on his choice of middlegame theme in the same way that Keith Arkell aimed for Minority Attacks (Half-open files/4).

13 Bg4 Black’s pawns are fixed on dark squares, so White exchanges light-squared bishops. Petrosian’s move is a Buy One Get One Free. He rids himself of his bad bishop and gets rid of Black’s good bishop. White is not afraid of 14 … Bxg4 after 14 f3. The doubled pawns are not weak and have an important function - clamping down on Black’s chances of playing … f7-f5 which in turn ends any chance of … e5-e4 after  a possible e4xf5.

14 … Ncd3 looks like a great outpost for Black’s knight, but it doesn’t work out at all. Why not? Compare Stean’s Chapter Two

and games like Karpov - Kasparov (16) 1985 and Kasparov - Karpov (16) 1986.

Reminder

Compare this game with Benko - Najdorf, Los Angeles 1963 (Outposts/2).

There’s a chapter on Nd6 (d3) in Chess Pattern Recognition for Beginners.