I learned a nice concept recently when researching how to counter the Grand Prix Attack in the Sicilian Defense. It implies a typical way of neutralizing the white Queen that has come to h4 on its standard route via d1-e1-h4, setting itself up to play a major role in the white attack against the black … Uhlmann’s defense: how to shut them down when they come for your king weiterlesen
Note: This essay on the Caro Kann Two Knights has first been published in September 2016 on r/chess (remember MVL having climbed to 2.819 Elo?). In order to replay the updated version below and integrate it into your chess files get the BodenseeBase. Poor MVL. 70 games without a loss, then he blundered away a … A deliberate provocation and a knight hunt in the Caro Kann weiterlesen
So there is this brandnew killer line against the Slav in which Black has experienced nothing but pain since its invention in 2015. White has scored >80% with 9.h4 (>70% as of June 2018), and instead of fighting it many Black players avoid the critical line (7...Nb6, sometimes called the "Sokolov variation" after Dutch grandmaster … A wonder weapon against Sokolov’s Slav? weiterlesen
Positional dominance being a piece down. AlphaZero would approve of this game. Stockfish on its own couldn't have done it, but with a little help from its human friend and carefully guided to the (almost) winning position at move 17 it then channeled its inner AlphaZero in the most flashy way possible. Even a little piece … Channeling the inner AlphaZero weiterlesen
The deeper you delve into the mysteries of your game, the rarer the aha moments become. Here's one I enjoyed some time ago. Being an exchange down in a theoretical position from the Tarrasch System of the French Defense it seemed to me that Black should avoid exchanges. That's what we do in general when … A French aha moment weiterlesen
The areas in which human intellect outwits the machines' calculation power become smaller and smaller. But they are still there. Machines don't understand fortresses for instance, often misevaluate opposite coloured bishops or have trouble grasping long term concepts in general. When German U18 champion Roven Vogel crushed Indian wunderkind Karthik Thrish in Bamberg recently, he … Machines like it concretely weiterlesen
The White player isn't too serious about the game. He enjoys fun openings, then lets his engine take over after the first few moves. This approach can lead to cool games, but also to desasters like this one. White plays machine moves until he is lost. Black on the other hand uses his powerful helper better, … The Bodensee Counter Gambit in action weiterlesen
Once installed on an outpost in the center a knight can become an incredibly powerful piece to support our attack and interfere with the enemy's forces. Due to their long range impact the bishops usually stay behind. They can be equally powerful from a distance. This game is differenct. For a long time a bishop … A beautiful destruction and a rare concept in the Caro Kann Two Knights weiterlesen
From a Slav player’s perspective nothing is more annoying than the Exchange Slav. There are two types of opponents who will go 3.cxd5: The very good player who doesn’t mind maintaining a microscopic edge for a long time and aims to grind us down slowly, and the poor player who goes for something symmetrical in … The two types who play the Exchange Slav: neither of them is fun weiterlesen
The desire to spread chess education among those in need was the main motivation that drove us to start this site a few months ago. But there was more. From other chess endeavours we had stockpiled dozens of essays on strategy, opening surveys and analyzed (correspondence) games, all of them in English. A place to … In eigener Sache: „Perlen vom Bodensee“ becomes bilingual weiterlesen
