SC Week 7/6: Petrosian - Portisch, Candidates' Match 1974
"The role played by space in the endgame is in fact much more straight-forward than in the middlegame … He who commands more space has more squares for his king, it’s as simple as that. More space means a potentially stronger king."
Michael Stean
Notes and Observations
13 e5, 18 f4 Petrosian happily places his central pawns on dark squares leaving himself - nominally at least - with a bad bishop. Especially given the next note.
Why? At the risk of stating the obvious, because he thinks the position demands it. It’s interesting, in fact, that as the game progresses Portisch feels the need to dissolve the centre, thereby freeing White’s bishop. Bad bishop? Tell that to the piece that dominates the last 10 moves of the game from d4.
This is one last demonstration that Simple Chess is not about ensuring you don’t ever take on positional weaknesses in our games. The message is that we shouldn’t take on positional weakness that can be exploited by our opponent.
14 Nd4, 15 b3 Just as in another game from the same Candidates’ match (Introduction/3), Petrosian is willing to allow his fianchettoed bishop to leave the board.
In this case Petrosian’s idea is to clear the path along the h1-a8 diagonal for his king to reach the centre. It’s noteworthy that he doesn’t rush to execute this plan. Stean’s note to White’s 20th is instructive.
23 Rd2 As Portisch did to Reshevsky so Petrosian does to Portisch. White is ready to double on the d-file but ends up playing on the e- and f-files and eventually invading on the g-file. Flexibility is a weapon.
Reminders
The Hedgehog Opening was a favourite of Ulf Andersson’s (Open files/3; Half-open files/3) with both colours. There’s a chapter devoted to his games in this line in Kaufeld and Kern’s Grandmaster Chess Strategy.
An interesting final game. Space, superior pieces and black having a weaker king. The fact that the white king could penetrate in the center of the board if he would like also reminds me of the colour complexes. The light squared bishops are traded and so these square become available for the player with more 'space'.
ReplyDeleteWith this final game I can also happily say I have finished a chess book from start to finish. Also something that doesn't happen to me too many times. Posting here on the blog was definitely a nice extra motivation to do this.
I checked and my first post want on the 6th of january, so it took me 5,5 weeks more or less, besides a job and other things.
Thanks for all the blog posts and maybe I will join in some new joint book reading.
My next plan is study some out of Dvoretsky endgame manual, dive into some openings (definitely keeping the Simple Chess concepts in minmd) and then see it from there. I also have the Aagard series and Yusopov's series in my bookshelf, so enough to do! ;)
Best,
Maxim le Clercq
Maxim,
DeleteThanks very much for your contributions to the series. They are much appreciated.
Good luck with your chess in the future