Nova Daily - 8 April 2025
Hi!
Yesterday's blog was quite sad in every way. Apart from losing a friend, the mood I had was visible in the level of my game. I don't want to use my mood as an excuse for playing bad, because I'd just be lying to myself. I decided to play with high degrees of turbulence in my head. I played every one of those moves during that game. And I got the result that my play deserved. There's only one person who is responsible for that, and that's me. No-one else.
It's too early to draw any lessons from what happened, but one thing that I did feel is that I'm on my own. I have to deal with my own inner turbulence, on my own. No-one else can bear my crosses. If I feel pain, no-one can take that away from me. No-one can take my grief from me. No soft healers. I have to deal with it completely, and on my own.
That sounds much more depressing than it is. The thing is, I have faith in myself. I've dealt with losing people before, and I've survived every bad day so far. No matter what has come my way, I have always been able to deal with it in the end. And even though I don't feel any bit optimistic about this situation, I have faith that I will be able to deal with this situation as well.
I won't pretend that I'm more mature, wise, or serene than I really am. I experience the same feelings as the next person, and the fact that I can verbalise them to a reasonable extent doesn't make me a better human being than anyone else. And when I'm feeling down, you know what cheers me up like nothing else?
Have a guess.
CHOCOLATE
ALCOHOL
WORKING OUT
WINNING A GAME OF CHESS
LAUGHTER
LAUGHTER, of course! Nothing beats a good laugh. So I called up a few of my other friends, and they were able to cheer me up like they always can. And I felt a little better about my situation afterwards.
Laughter has a lot of short-term and long-term therapeutic benefits. According to this online article, it can help to deal with tension, activate the body and alleviate pain. Captain Obvious, who was given the pen for parts of the article, also wrote that it can improve your mood. There's an eye-opener for you.
Laughing can put adversities into perspective. In my case there's a lot to be grateful and joyful about, and laughter can serve as a reminder for that.
However, there can be a dark side to laughter as well. There are the people who will make a joke at any point in time to try to defuse tension, or avert the attention so that they don't have to face rough topics. It can be bad news when laughter becomes a default self-protection mechanism. There's a place for everything, and laughter can't be a default state of mind. But it's a great weapon to have in my arsenal of coping mechanisms.
To be fair, though, winning a game of chess also has its perks. Especially when it happens like this:
The game
I won't talk about it too much in advance. Just have a look.
My thoughts:
The reason why I laughed as much during this game was essentially tension release. This is how you'd want your games to go in a situation like this. I included the laughters here because it's part of the narrative of the game.
Model games:
The move 8...Bg4 is the most popular one in this variation. Both l'Ami and Schandorff suggest it as a way to punish white for not having inserted the move h2-h3 somewhere down the line. It makes complete sense to develop the light-square bishop like this, as the pin is quite pesky. But it needs to be said that the line I played, with 8...Re8 followed by Nb8-d7-f8-g6, Be6, Qd7 and Rad8 is also completely fine for black, and both authors acknowledge this.
From a practical point of view it's important to understand white's intentions in this position. White wants to untangle the pin and set the queenside pawns in motion. To get out of the pin, white could opt to play with 10.Bf5 (l'Ami only covers 10.Be4) and 11.Qd3. This happened in the blitz game between Ansat and Anton Guijarro at the world championship in New York. You know, that tournament where Carlsen and Nepo refused to play for the first place after remaining level during the tie-breaks.
9.h3, although the most popular, isn't the only move that white has at their disposal. Anand played 9.Re1 against Gukesh in a blitz game in 2023. The game shows an interestint idea for black: put the pawns on light squares and move the bishop into the long diagonal. But even if for nothing else, it's nice to include this game because of the clash between future world champion and former world champion.
The analysis:
It wasn't a perfect game, but I believe that it's very instructive nevertheless. I did some extra work on the analysis in the beginning so that it's more accessible for players of different levels. Hopefully this can help starters and post-beginners with understanding the nuanced strategic differences between the three different openings that I discussed, and I hope I've made a good case for the Caro-Kann by how my bishop chased white's pieces around like the gadfly that pursued Io until she found refuge in Egypt.
What can I take away from this game:
- In the opening, a good case can be made for playing 8...Bg4 to punish white for delaying h2-h3. Both GM authors recommend this line.
- White's principled plan in the position is to set the 4-3 majority in motion. The most critical breakthrough move for this plan is d4-d5. When white made the critical mistake of playing 18.c5??, which ended all of white's ambitions, the right move would've been 18.d5!!.
- Black shouldn't make too many pawn moves on the opponent's wing. In this case, moving 16...a6 and 17...b5 is unnecessary and gives white a welcome opportunity of opening up the queenside.
- Black's plan in this line should revolve around placing the light-square bishop on e4 and teaming up the queen and dark-square bishop against h2.
