Almost half a year has passed since I played Kevin Xu, a talented young boy of ICA. Moreover, today we played almost the same system, the so-called “black knight in the center” variant occurred earlier in August last year. While reading this report, I recommend all of you to compare it with my last year report, yet it is not obligatory. You only have to know that in my last year report I explained the variant mentioned above from Black’s perspective, but now I will explain it from the White’s, Kevin’s perspective.
Having just played 4… e5 (look at the very upper position in the picture) Black wanted to settle his knight on d4. There were three strategies of the White reaction in response of it, marked by A, B, and C and leading to shown black positions A, B, and C respectively.
Position A stands for the strategy allowing Black’s knight to settle on d4, after that White has to trade it immediately for his f3-knight (otherwise Black supports his d4-knight by c7-c5 move). This variant had actually happened in our game, but in my opinion it is the least dangerous strategy for Black, since Black gets a good d-pawn passed pawn (surprisingly d4-pawn becomes a passer!).
Strategy B consists in opening the center by trading d/e pawns. It is better strategy than A-strategy, but it appears that Black can still be OK in it, since his powerful dark-squared bishop gets a clear freedom.
The most unpleasant (at least for me playing Black) White’s strategy is strategy C. Its idea is to support the pressure in the center as much as possible, not allowing Black so easily to settle his c6-knight on d4. By playing Be3 White also threatens to play d5 and c6-knight cannot play Nc6-d4 due to a loss of a pawn.
Of course all three White’s strategies are playable; it is a matter of taste to play them. But I strongly suspect that Kevin did not know much about the ideas I had just explained. As I implied recently, I would have been feeling less comfortable if Kevin had chosen Strategies B or C (especially the last one).
Nevertheless, until some moment he played very well. There were at least two critical moments of a game shown by white position 1 and black position 2 respectively in the picture. How would you play in them? Answers are in the next paragraph.
In white position 1 it is very attractive to play e4-e5 to exploit a situation connected with the black non-castled king (and with an idea of 10. e5 Ng4 11. e6). However the following variant is acceptable for Black: 10. e5 Ng4 11. e6 Qh4 (saving move!) 12. exf7 Kxf7 13. h3 Ne3 14. Bxe3 dxe3, with an unclear value. In black position 2 Kevin had prepared a devil trap (his last move was Re1-e2). If Black plays Rb2, then a beautiful tactic shot Ba5 works for him perfectly (a credit for him!).
The biggest tension of our game falls on a segment starting 27-th move. I had found a good counter-play connected with the invasion of my queen into the first horizontal. Somewhere Kevin had made mistakes. Thus 31. Rxc5 was a fatal mistake; it was better to play 31. Rb2, but Black still would have had a good position. On the 40-th move, due to the essential material losses, Kevin had resigned.
Returning from the tournament late at night, I got caught in a snowstorm. The city (I live in New York) had not seen anything like this (or even heavy snow in general) for several years. I was afraid that public transport would be disrupted, and I would have to spend the night in a provincial New Jersey hotel. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. By 10p.m. I was home, enjoying a hot bath…
I hope all participants of the tournament returned home wealthy; there have to be many interesting games!
Congratulations to Yefim Treger for winning our report contest, and a free entry to the tournament. If you want a chance to win a free entry into our Saturday Quads, email a report to icanewjersey@gmail.com, following these guidelines. We hope you guys have had a great week and we hope to see you at our next Quad which is February 22. Enjoy and we hope to see you soon!
Visitors: 151