Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Perils of straying away from opening principles

This game was played at the club last night. I've been bouncing from Silman's endgame course to Sierawan's Winning openings and also his Strategies book. A nice post holiday study mix.

I knew Mr. H was prepared for a Smith-Morra since last time I had white that's how things went. I decided to switch hit and play 1.d4. The game is below:


I played a Sarrat Attack like my Old school Harlow B Daly Maine Chess champion of a previous generation used to play. It was very much like the London system except the c-pawn goes out to C4.

The problem was at move 10 I should have stuck with opening principles and castled short first then look at locking up the center. I saw the knight coming in to h4 as well. Perhaps even an escape pod for the Bishop with h3 might have been good too. Instead I decided that an additional pawn move was justified because it seemed to cement the position for Black.

I deserved the pawn droppings. But here's the odd thing. I had a nice false sense of confidence walking into the endgame courtesy of all the Silman reading lately. I actually had delusions of possibly being able to draw that game. I bailed out when my opponent pulled a " chicken coop" (outside passer) on me.

6 comments:

damourax said...

Chess is a amazing thing...
The 10th move can change the whole destiny of the game... That's quite interesting, only one early move and it's all lost!

At least you've learned something with that game :)

Anonymous said...

Reading Silman's endgame book myself, one "rule" I haven't see in there is "All Rook endgames are drawn." (He mentions this as a pseudo-rule in a couple other books.)

That endgame was hopeless, but perhaps keeping Rooks on would have kept things spicy?

Polly said...

That ending looked very lost, but I do agree with LEP that trying to keep the rooks on the board might have made Black's job a little harder.

It was not only being down two pawns, but you had those ugly kingside pawns. Even without the extra pawn on the queenside I think 3 on 2 on the kingside is hard to defend.

BlunderProne said...

I totally new it was a lost end game. I was just being my usual tenacious self and fighting on to hte bitter end. Part of the problem was I got a frantic call from home ( with my phone on vibrate) and I needed to check out as quick as possible. By then I had already lost the 2 pawns but I wasn't thinking clearly either.

Robert Pearson said...

Frantic call from home during a game really suck, even when ahead in material!

Anonymous said...

BP, Something like 2...c5 or 3...c5 might have made your opening less tenable from the beginning. Black's idea would be to take advantage of your missing queen's bishop, and harrass your b2 pawn. Playing Bf4 early in a Queen's Pawn game doesn't lose immediately, but you have to watch out for this idea. ...just my quick thoughts on the game.

Howard G