You may recall from my last post on World Open Game 1 4. g3. You may also recall how I was going to try and split up my analysis posts so they are not massive. I also want to post analysis type stuff on an every other day sort of schedule.
So, in this post I am going to introduce my analysis of 4. b3. To do this, we are going to look at a nice old game.
Geza Maroczy is an Hungarian player who perhaps is a much better player than his renown would indicate. He actually was set to play Emmanuel Lasker in a World Championship match in 1906, but this fell apart because of various un chess related turmoil. His legacy to chess is the Maroczy Bind, an interesting opening where White plays e4 and c4 and attempts to prevent Black from playing the freeing pawn move d5. Play revolving around this idea is still very much alive today, and the moderately popular Hedgehog Opening retains many of the same ideas as the Maroczy Bind.
Vladimir Vukovic is best known for his book The Art of Attack in Chess. Personally, I dont like this book all that much and think it is overrated. It is possible, though, that the book has been emulated and the ideas in it have been transcribed in a better form. So the book is actually really good for the time. But updates of the material are now available and now the book pales a bit in comparison.
Anyway, the book just goes through a bunch of ideas about attacking. The best idea in the book is that you should attack various squares. Haha, that is little sarcastic, but that kind of is a large portion of the philosophy of the book. Aside from the philosophy, though, it does have a wide variety of very nice examples of attacking chess. The problem is, though, you can get a wide variety of excellent examples of attacking chess for free on the internet.
To a certain degree, it is a classic chess book, so if you are the collector type it may be worthwhile for you to own this book.
Moving along to the game, lets look at the position a bit after 4. b3.
White aims to fianchetto his dark squared Bishop. When he does this, he will neutralize Black's dark squared Bishop's pressure on his Queen side. He also may have the opportunity to trade off dark squared Bishop's which will greatly weaken Black's King side.
I am only going to point out a few brief things until move 13. On move 6, White plays Qc1 which protects his dark squared Bishop on b2. This move looks a bit clunky, but it does seem to work pretty well. I would definitely look for ways Black to exploit this move, though, as it just looks really clunky.
On move 10, Black effectively decides to fianchetto his light squared Bishop when he plays 10...b6. This doesnt look like a bad plan at all, but it is fairly committal and Black likely will have alternative places to put his light squared Bishop. Thus, it is worth noting that this may be an area where Black can try something a lot different.
Now move 13, where White plays Bxf6.
Here, we can see that Black's King side will be somewhat weak, especially his dark squares. White's Queen side will also be weak, but notably, White's King isnt there. This probably isnt the biggest deal for Black, though, because there are not a whole lot of pieces on the board that can attack Black's King.
Black has to take the Bishop with his Queen, so 13...Qxf6 and then 14. Qc3!?. I am not sure if I should just give this move an exclamation point. I gave it the "interesting move" notation because it is an interesting move. White is going to simplify into an endgame where he has doubled pawns on the Queen side. Normally, this is somewhat foolish, but here, White will get a lot of pressure on Black's d6 pawn.
Before I go on any longer, lets look at the position after 17. Rad1.
Black doesnt really have a great way to defend the d6 pawn. Also note that it is backward. A backward pawn means that the pawn cannot be supported by another pawn. For instance, in the above position, White's c4 pawn is not backwards because it can be and is supported by the b3 pawn.
I am not too sure about the terminology, but usually a backward pawn also connotes that the pawn is on an open file. This means that the pawn can be attacked by the rooks and queen of the other player. This can be a pretty serious weakness, and can often lead to the loss of the pawn and loss of the game.
Looking again at the position, note how White's c3 pawn is also unable to be protected by a pawn. However, White's c4 pawn and Black's c5 pawn block the file, so Black's Rooks will have a hard time attacking it. Generally, I wouldnt call White's c3 pawn backwards.
Regardless of what you call it, Black's d6 pawn is a weakness. Both players maneuver around a bit, and finally we get to the position after 23...e5.
Black's d6 pawn looks firmly backward at this point. However, this may be slightly deceiving. I believe what Black was going for here was a series of King side pawn pushes that would eventually break up White's bind on the d5 square, or at least provide some compensation to Black.
For instance, notice that if Black were able to play exf4 and White played gxf4, White's e4 pawn would actually be backward. Black's light squared Bishop is already providing a little bit of pressure on this pawn, so this is a pretty good idea.
I could be missing something here.
After a bit of maneuvering, this is sort of what happens. After 28. Ng4.
Black is able to initiate his exf4 idea, but White has developed some other interesting counterplay. A fairly series of exchanges
It is not at all clear to me why White doesnt take the exchange on move 30. Instead he plays Nxh7+. I dont think there are any tactics that he has to worry about. Rather, I think he just feels confident in the endgame he gets to after move 38. The endgame after 30. Nxg8 gets White up an exchange, but he is down a pawn on the King side and his doubled pawns on the Queen side may make winning this endgame difficult.
Here is the position after the possible 30. Nxg8 fxg3+ 31. Kxg3 Kxg8
I dont know, this looks pretty good for White to me. Maybe for a master level player, the rook game that actually occurs is an even easier win. Maybe I should work on my Rook endgames!
The endgame he actually gets to, after move 38.
Well, this actually does look pretty good for White as well. He is a pawn up, though it is doubled, and I guess you could say he has the initiative. After some maneuverings, the position after 49. Rd5 is this.
After move 54...Ke6 the position in this.
And here White decides to push a pawn.
White has undoubled his pawns, which makes his position look much better. Black cant do much in this position, but he has been able to move his rook from a somewhat passive position to a more active position.
After this, White aims to trade off both Black's Queen side pawns. He is willing to lose his g pawn to do this.
With two passed pawns, it is difficult or impossible for Black to stop the pawns.
Both sides push their pawns a bit, and get their Kings into position. With the move 77. Kc7, White finds the nice idea of trading off his a pawn to get Black's g pawn and good King position. With his King on c7, White will have a fairly easy time promoting his c pawn. Thus, Black must decline to take the a pawn.
This doesnt help though. The final position.
Black's Rook is actually no longer protecting his g pawn, because if his Rook moves off the a file, White will Queen that pawn. Even worse, if Black takes the a pawn after White's 82. Rxg3, he loses his Rook to White's Rg7+. Finally, if Black plays something like Ra2 just to get out of the way, Rg8 will guarantee Black either loses his Rook or White gets a Queen.
There is nothing Black can do, so he resigns.
So, that game wasnt exactly won in the opening. However, White came up with an interesting way to keep up a little bit of pressure throughout, and was able to simplify into a winning Rook endgame.
This doesnt really allow us to say anything conclusive about 4. b3, but it looks pretty promising at this point.
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