In this blitz game I am faced with the Scandinavian Defense. When I was younger this opening used to cause me some troubles. Recently I have started playing a line with an early Ne5 and I have found it to be a great way to maintain pressure against black. Possibly the move surprises some opponents as well as often the move comes slightly later in the opening. I thought this was an instructive game and I felt like I learnt a few new things about the opening. I hope you do too.
I have always played the Sicilian Defence, but as the years have passed I have forgotten quite a bit of theory on the opening. The Sicilian gives black winning chances as the imbalanced positions are often double edged. If you take a wrong step in the opening you often get crushed (or have an awful backward pawn to deal with) and this is what has been happening to me (a lot!) as I look to relearn the Sicilian Defence.
The variation I have been looking at over the past few days is the Najdorf variation. This is a very popular line that can lead to some crazy positions.
Check out the position between Fabiano Caruana and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from their most recent match up in the Sinquefield Cup.
I have been trying to play this opening in all of my blitz games and so this month I have played 9 games in the Najdorf variation. I won 3, drew 1 and lost 5. Clearly there is still a bit of learning to do!
Here is a game that given more time I may have won. It was a fun game though and the best example of the classic queenside attack with b5 to b4.
Learning The Najdorf Read More »
Here is a fun blitz game I played recently. I made one clear mistake toward the end of the game and then a few in time trouble, but I played with 85% accuracy and my opponent was very solid with 90% accuracy and way quicker on the clock than I was. I need to get faster at calculating in blitz games!
Hey everyone
Another blitz game today.
I love playing the Ruy Lopez. There are a few mistakes in this game, but no horrible blunders. The game finishes with a nice version of the smothered mate.