Hi everyone!
Here is a bltiz game that features the Caro Kann opening. I play the classical line with a delayed h5. I felt like I had a really comfortable position and was able to maintain good pressure. The game ends with a nice pin that leads to mate.
Hi everyone!
Here is blitz game just for laughs today. I made a mouse slip early on the the game with g5. It ends up being a good move as I pick up a knight for free and then go on to just clean up the game. Another interesting thing about this game was that I had an accuracy score of 98.7. The only bad move being the mouse slip?! I play on chess.com and I really like the accuracy feature and game analysis tools on the site. I may post more about those in the future.
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 »