Lone Wolf 4/11 - Development is more than counting

Lone Wolf, Season #21

ROUND: 4

JB (2020) vs NeZnaSahDigra (1816)

Result: win (24 moves)

Here’s something that shouldn’t be possible: 35 years of serious chessing and a literal attic full of chess books notwithstanding, I have somehow contrived to arrive at a point where I have no serviceable opening repertoire with White.

As a temporary measure I’ve been switching between 1 Nf3, 1 d4 and 1 c4 as I go. What I play in any given game being determined by my mood, what if anything I know about my opponent and a certain amount of randomness. In this particular game, though, I had noticed that my opponent had tried the Englund Gambit (1 d4 e5) as Black in a classical game a little while ago and I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t give him the opportunity to gift me a pawn should he want to.

And what would I do if my opponent wasn’t in such a generous mood?

Back when I was playing regularly I spent many years on the White side of the Catalan.  It’s the kind of system that has many chances of leaving you with a small but long-term advantage.

The downside, especially, when you’re very rusty, is that there are also lines where Black can just grab a pawn on c4 and try to hang on. Black has an awful lot of options as to where to put his/her pieces and they’re all very messy and difficult to evaluate.

This is exactly the sort of thing that can lead to accidents. Either missing the best lines and coming out of the opening clearly worse and even worse or just burning most of your clock before the game’s even got going.

I wasn’t feeling greatly enthusiastic about entering these positions, but in the end I decided to chance it. Needless to say, within a couple of minutes of the game starting I was out of book and facing this position.

I looked it up after the game. All sources say you just go 6 Ne5  - a natural starting point - and if Nc6, 7 Nxc4 Black’s position isn’t very pleasant.

As it happens this was the first line I looked at but I rejected it. My reasoning was that I’d spent three moves with my knight just to recapture the pawn. Black was already ahead in development and on top of that the last piece is coming into the game with check.

So instead I went with 6 O-O. It’s not a terrible  move, although it wouldn’t be out of place to call i inaccurate. Some nervous moments followed before Black’s reluctance to get castled eventually got him in a pickle.

Taking a closer look at the key position after 6 Ne5 Nc6, 7 Nxc4 I see where I made my mistake. I was guilty of the quantity of pieces Black had moved and hadn’t given any thought to the quality of his/her development.

The truth is, Black’s queenside pieces are not well placed at all. The bishop has no scope and the knight gets in the way of the c-pawn which preventing the standard … c7-c5 counter strike in the centre.

Factor in another couple of tempi that Black is going to have to spend relocating these pieces and the development issue doesn’t look so bad at all.