Recently I played a game in the Caro-Kann Spassky Variation and it got me interested in looking up a few games played by Spassky and other top chess players, in order to learn more about the opening line.
Here are a few games that I looked at.
Caro-Kann Spassky Variation Read More »
A few poor moves (as would be expected in blitz), but overall a fairly good example of the types of position that can arise in the Caro-Kann. I feel fairly confident playing against the Caro-Kann and yet I made an early blunder forgetting to play Kf3. Luckily my opponent missed the opportunity to take the advantage. The game was a good lesson in move order!
Here is a blitz game that shows the simple back rank mate being used as a tactic to win the game. If you want to get better at spotting this tactic then I would recommend doing the puzzle rush activity on chess.com as you will find the idea comes up often and in different ways.
The 2021 Sinquefield Cup has finished and the winner of the tournament is Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. He had a great tournament and played really well. I thoroughly enjoyed watching his games and the commentary of the event. Here is one of Maxime’s wins against Jeffery Xiong where he is able to gain a great deal of space as white in the Ruy Lopez. Another defining feature of the game is the control of the h file and if the game were to have continued you would have seen the Rook heading to h7 giving white complete control of the position.
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