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Monday, April 14, 2008
Woodpushers’ Corner: The Value Of Patience
Fran has been trying to teach me patience at the board. He's gotten somewhere, but as good a teacher as he is, he's an even better demonstrator:
White is apparently either unknowledgeable about the Sicilian, or afraid of Fran's opening knowledge. Whatever the case, he's allowed Black a free hand in the center, at the cost of a couple of doubled Pawns -- a price a devotee of the Dragon Sicilian is often willing to pay. The push to d5 reveals the incoherence of the White formation: 18. ed is answered by Nxd4, and the Knight will be impossible to dislodge at an acceptable price.
White has surrendered the center to Black's c-Rook / black-squared Bishop / center Pawn mass. White's Queen is a juicy target with few places to hide. Yet there's nothing really dramatic coming, just a long, affectionate, smothering hug.
The pressure has grown too intense for White. Black's c-Rook and mass of center Pawns have proved to be stifling. If 23, de, Nc5 followed by d3. So White throws a Knight in the hope of freedom.
Fran's first Queen move of the game! (How can he wait so long?) The threat is Rc2. Together, the passed d-Pawn and the pressure against f2 are irresistible. Despite his Knight sacrifice, White has achieved no freedom at all -- and all Black has had to do is manuever his pieces onto good squares!
The d-Pawn has fulfilled its destiny! (So why won't he play me any more, hm?)
Comments
I looked at that opening on the first screen shot, especially the D5 pawn with all his friends in the middle of the board, and thought—find a mating combination right away, or resign and start from scratch. Playing on will mean exactly what it meant—a slow, painful, cramped death.
Remind me not to play Fran in chess unless he has at least five scotches in him.
Posted by IB Bill on 04/16/2008 at 02:55 PMIt would be a delight and a privilege to play him some games of chess--and you also Fetiche. I’m always happy to see games here, and perhaps I’ll post one of my own soon.
Posted by Robert Pearson on 04/17/2008 at 12:30 AMI must say, it was a pleasure not merely to learn the game at Fran’s knee, but even more to sample the depth of his thought about it. This might embarrass him a little, but I’ve never known anyone as good at finding the ideas and themes buried deeply in anything, a game of chess very much included. In my opinion, his great gift is for finding the hidden unities in things—all things. When he analyzes, he’s always looking for the unifying factors that make a subject into a whole rather than just a hodgepodge of randomly associated parts.
I consider myself blessed to know him. But I’ll bet you knew that already.
Posted by FeticheNouvelle on 04/17/2008 at 06:30 PM
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