Saturday, June 9, 2007

Position Tactics -- Position 2

Many of these early positions are actually tough to pull off in games. That doesn't mean they aren't important. They are important because they help decide what happens in the opening by preventing you or your opponent from doing things. They can also come back in the middle of the game if the opponent has not taken care to deal with the questions these positions ask.

This second position also raises the question of taxonomy. I am not sure of the best way to present the positions, other than they must to be presented. The way they are working for now, is from the most basic, to more complicated, and that they one should be relatively closely related to the next. But this is not a promise, nor does it mean that we won't either renumber or change the names somehow later. So don't get hung up on names and numbers, yet.

The next position comes from a variation of position 1. It arises in Damiano's defense, but it shouldn't be ignored, because I am sure that it arises in other positions. It comes from the Qh5 where it exploits the light square diagonal on the King. It also focuses on the e5 pawn which results in position 2.

Again, please comment where you may have seen this position or have other positions that you think are important.







Damiano's Defense
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 f5?!
3. Nxe5 fxe5?!
4. Qh5+ g3??
5. Qxe5

Even our beloved Blunderprone just had this come up in his winning game against the foolish interlopers. Who continued the game as black with 8. ... Nxg4 9. fxg4 Qxh4+ Winning two pawns and the game.



More Later.

4 comments:

likesforests said...

"Many of these early positions are actually tough to pull off in games. That doesn't mean they aren't important."

A similar issue comes up in studying endings--sometimes it's worth studying an endgame that will rarely occur in practice because of the lessons you learn about piece coordination, or because a game constantly threatens to reduce to that simpler endgame and you need to know whether that's good.

likesforests said...

Regarding the Damiano Defense, the typical reply for Black in the position you've shown is Ke7. It's a theoretically busted opening, but that doesn't mean it's easy for an average player to defeat a prepared opponent over the board even knowing he should sacrifice his knight for three pawns. I know of a strong expert who plays it as his main weapon against e4, believe it or not!

Temposchlucker said...

This "Zorro move" is a wellknown beginnerstrick in the King's gambit. 1.e4 e5 2.f4 f6 3.fxe5 fxe5 4.Qh5

takchess said...

The classification task at hand is very large. It does make sense to start from basic building blocks from early opening traps. I look for weaknesses and always ask how can I take advantage of it. Since you were looking for suggestions as to weaknesses to classify. One is where white queen has open lines to a check on a4 or h5 forking material on the fourth or fifth rank.