Thursday 17 January 2008

Following Book

Looking through the games from the current Australian Junior Championship I was struck by the game below. Without knowing the full story behind the game, I will still hold it up as a warning against relying too much on "book learning".
The opening is a Sicilian Dragon, and opening much loved by juniors, and one that lends itself to the memorisation of long variations. In this case White played the Yugoslav Attack (9.0-0-0 line) and Black countered with the thematic exchange sacrifice on c3. In Chris Wards "Winning with the Sicilian Dragon2" he even states "On 12.Bh6 it is the same old story: 12. ... Bxh6 13.Qxh6 Rxc3! 14.bxc3 Qa5".
Now I don't know how deep White's preparation went, but I suspect Black was still in his. What does seem clear is that White didn't realise it was time to change plans, and continued his attempt to mate Black. Unfortunately to do this he removed some key defensive pieces from around his King (and didn't retreat others), and was mated instead.

Setiabudi,A - Antolis,C [B75]
Australian Junior Championship, 15.01.2008

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.f3 Bg7 7.Be3 0-0 8.Qd2 Nc6 9.0-0-0 Bd7 10.g4 Rc8 11.h4 Ne5 (D)
12.Bh6 Bxh6 13.Qxh6 Rxc3 14.bxc3 Qa5 15.h5 Qxc3 16.Kb1 Rc8 17.hxg6 fxg6 18.g5 Nh5 19.Bh3 Nc4 0-1


So where is the lesson in this? Surely Black actually scored the point due to extra book knowledge? Well, while that is true, it also seems that he understood the resultant position after 13. ... Rxc3 much better. And so the observation (from White's point of view) I would make (and it is an observation made by many players previously) is "Opening lines only give you positions, they don't give you an understanding of positions".

No comments: