My Best Games #7: Storming the Small Center | Pirc Defense
Thanks for joining me again, in this post we'll be seeing two more attacking games! I'll start a new section of the blog for puzzles, and there'll be a few for you to do each time I post.
Now that it's summer I have more free time, but also I'm doing a lot of other things and blogging and analyzing games takes a long time, so I probably won't be able to keep posting every day.
With that out of the way, lets start talking about our main game today!
In this game my opponent is @XMadKnight. At the time of the game he was rated 1991, but now is rated 1916 (just to clear up any confusion, when I give the ratings it will always be the rapid rating since these games are played in 10|0 time control. If it is not the rapid rating, I will say so). I was rated 2023, very close to where I am now, so our ratings were pretty close.
The opening played was a Pirc Defense: Small Center. It's characterized by the opening moves 1. e4 d6 2. d4 e6 but can be reached by transposition a few different ways, for example 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d6 and 1. d4 d6 2. e4 e6. I explain more about the opening in the gam analysis, but in my opinion isn't a very good opening for black, reasons why will be given in the analysis.
It was a wild game, with the advantage swinging back and forth between players as we both rushed to get the opposing king. Inevitably there were quite a few mistakes and even a missed win by me, but that's just something you cannot avoid at this time control, and it's one of the reasons I like playing 10|0. Mistakes and imbalances make for more interesting games!
Let's go!
The finishing combination was nice.
The next game that I'm going to present today, another game previously posted in the SPL forums (which you can get to by going to my intro blog and clicking the links to the games here:
).
It's another KID game, which just shows how often the KID can lead to sharp attacking games and win a spot in my blog!
We all love to see an exposed king just waiting to be mated, don't we?
Now to finish this post, some puzzles!
1. White to play and mate in 5. (by F. Kohnlein) At a first glance it looks so impossible but there is an answer, with only one line of play. See if you can solve it!
2. This one also looks impossible. Each side has only a king, bishop, and pawn, yet white can still mate by virtually forced play. How? (by Geurt Gijssen)
3. White to play and mate in 7. (by Florencio Mendes de Morales) You can only move the three queens on the a-file to mate. How? You have a choice on the first move but the rest has to be precise.
Hope you enjoyed the puzzles this time! More coming next time.
Thanks for reading! Next post coming soon.
colorfulcake
