nice

I love this guy's chess blog, but especially the way he presents the diagrams in his games:

http://musiquewandchess.blogspot.com/

Needs more arrows imo

nah it's perfectly clear.

Ok, I will explain it to all you nubz out there.

As you can see, after Kh1 white has 6 moves worth of an arrow, while black only has 4. Knowing that 2 arrows equal around 1 pawn, white already has a substantial advantage. Black has to create some more arrows soon or he will be in big trouble.

In the second diagram, we see that white managed to completely remove all of black's arrows and even managed to create a yellow arrow, which is a bonus arrow multiplier of 1.5. So, first question to all you out there willing to learn the art of arrow-counting: what is white's advantage in pawns in the second diagram?

A+, you should write a book about arrow theory. Might become very popular in Germany, there already is a book that suggests putting a coin on every square you control and the opponent doesn't, count the coins and thus determine who has the advantage.

He then proceeded to show that black should open with something like 1. d4 d6 2. e4 h6 3. Nf3 g5, or maybe that was another book by him (H.C.Opfermann).

smilingbill's opponent opened with something just as bizarre in one our chess.com games... (game was still in progress though so best to comment afterwards)

holy arrows swingdoc!

gee willickers, that's annoying to look at!

itt: haters hatin' on arrows, imo

Can anyone tell me where Black went wrong here?

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 c6 3. Bf4 Nf6 4. c3 Bf5 5. e3 e6 6. Nbd2 Bd6 7. Bg3 O-O 8. Qb3 b6 9. Be2 Qc7 10. O-O c5 11. c4 Bxg3 12. hxg3 Nc6 13. cxd5 exd5 14. Rac1 c4 15. Qa3 b5 16. Qc5 Qb6 17. Qxb6 axb6 18. a3 b4 19. Ne5 Nxe5 20. dxe5 bxa3 21. bxa3 Nd7 22. e4 Bxe4 23. Nxe4 dxe4 24. Rxc4 Rxa3 25. Rxe4 Ra5 26. f4 g6 27. Rb4 Rb8 28. Rfb1 h5 29. R1b2 Kg7 30. Kf2 Kh6 31. Bc4 Rc5 32. Bxf7 Rf8 33. e6 Nf6 34. Rxb6 1-0

Bring it, haters.

Lots of potential for black arrows on move 1 ... Bc4 ... impossible! Qf3 ... impossible! 0-0 ... impossible! I think you get my point ... :P

Black's position seems pretty reasonable to me until very late. Maybe c5 could have been postponed, but that's more a matter of taste; it looks like it worked well in the game.

24...e3 looks like a better use of that pawn; fxe3 is terrible for White, so after 25.f4 Rxa3 White has to annoy himself to round it up. (24...f5 also seems ok.)

26...g6 is a little strange...I'm not sure what the threat is, and it can't be good to put pawns on light squares, can it?

Really, my main thought is that in the transition to the endgame (say, moves 24-26), Black didn't really improve any of his pieces, and then ended up tied down to the b-pawn. Put the rook at a2, or the knight to c5, or move the R@f8 anywhere...

As always, my analysis shouldn't be trusted, but that's my take.

Team 45 45 league, Round 5. I'm playing this game on about 3 hours sleep, so I'm thinking it'd be nice to play a relatively simple positional game where I don't have to try too hard to calculate a bunch of complicated tactical lines. Then I got kinda stupid and practically forced opp to castle queenside and ended up in the exact type of game I was trying to avoid:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=41910

I'd like to hear any thoughts on this pawn formation when castled kingside.

I ask because I can only think of a few times I've ended up with it, and I always thought I had a good reason at the time (usually wanting to block pressure along the b8-h2 diagonal), but it always ends up being utterly awful for me.

You wrote "castled kingside" but the king is on b1. Which did you mean?

I meant for those pieces to be black and the board reversed. Adjust your monitor settings accordingly

Fixed original post, thx.

My dad used to play that against me all the time. It was his special little novelty that he invented (usually playing 1. e4 and only then c4 and d5), and later learned wasn't entirely uncommon in "real" openings out of the English. Back when he was the only person I ever played against, and I wasn't quite as good as him yet, it led to an awful lot of quick kingside checkmates, he was pretty good at using that structure to point everything at black's kingside, then he'd sac a bishop and mate me, lol.

Then I actually started studying chess, quickly improved my defensive skills, and won a lot of easy games against him a bishop up. The attacks weren't ever actually *sound*, just a little tricky for a Class E player to defend against in practice.

PS - In the diagram I don't think you are castled kingside...

EDIT: Oh, that pawn structure with black? Never seen it that I can think of...

Ah, I see. Let me answer with the correct notation, just for my own sanity.

My reply is "more information needed" -- especially because the reasons you give suggest that Black doesn't have a N@f6 to put on e4, and this seems best for Black if f5 supports a knight on e4 which cannot easily be dislodged. But e5 is a bit of a hole, and white may have g4 if his king is safe, with whatever threats made you want to play f5 anyway.

It's hard for me to assess the structure without knowing where the pieces are (Black's lightsquared bishop, for example, and White's pawns and king) but Black does play the Stonewall Dutch (not me) so it can't be that bad. But somehow I imagine Black needs to take care not to wind up to passive.

(Also, when you wrote "g8-a2 diagonal" did you mean b1-h7?)

Well, I guess the main question is "do you see the f- and d-pawns on the fourth rank (or fifth for black) with the e-pawn one behind, and the king on the kingside, and think 'That's awful' or 'That's useful in certain situations.'"

It's certainly not intrinsically bad, it totally depends on the rest of the pieces for both sides. Usually Black also has some pawns blocked on light squares in this kind of position.

Can certainly be useful for certain things, but I doubt there are many pawn formations which are never useful. (In before someone posts a picture of white pawns on h2, h3, h4, h5) As an opening, I don't have much of an opinion on the stonewall Dutch other than I don't really like playing against it. So if I get this position:



I'm not that thrilled.

In my opinion that structure tends to be inherently weak because of its lack of flexibility and dynamics, and I actually play the structure myself occasionally in lines like: 1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 e6 3. Nd2 c5 4. e3 d5 5. c3 Be7 6. Bd3 O-O 7. f4

It looks pretty with the e5 square and a great light bishop compared to black's joke of a bishop but I really think its kind of superficial. The structure really just yields itself towards almost exclusively piece play and I think a reasonably strong player on black's side should have no problem holding the position fairly easily.

I find it much more effective to face the stonewall with this sort of idea: 1. d4 f5 2. g3 e6 3. Bg2 d5 4. Nh3 Nf6 5. O-O Bd6 6. Bf4 O-O 7. Nd2 c6. The kingside knight will go->Nf4->d3. And the queens knight will go Nd2->f3. Very straight forward stuff there - its just the most direct method of reinforcing the weakness on e5. But that simple idea for me at least made the stonewall go from quite an annoyance to a complete pleasure to play against. White also scores obscenely well (like 80%+) in those lines as well, though certainly for a variety of reasons.

I've played the Dutch Stonewall quite a bit in the past. It was generally against weak (but equally skilled opponents), so it all went fine. The idea is to get a kingside attack while holding the center solidly, at least most of the time.

The issues with it is as Do It Right explains. There's also the plan to exchange DSBs (white initiating this, assuming we are talking about this structure from the black side) with b2-b3 and Bc1-a3. Black would have to counter with ...Bd6 and ...Qe7, else he would end up with ECO A94: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessopening?eco=A94 which seems ridiculously bad for black.

As white, you have a bit more leeway with such things, but again, Do it Right explains how it's inflexible. I've played such structures many times myself as I used to play the Bird (1. f4). There tends not to be any great, quick attack, even though the idea is to aggressively push forward on the kingside. And the other side has some pretty simple positional ideas to work with (mainly the big hole left on the e-file).

Still, I know I will end up playing this pawn structure from both sides of the board in the future. It's not totally without merit. The center really will be somewhat strongly locked. The advanced f-pawn will help you advance with pieces on the kingside. Against the right opponent, or occasionally just to mixt things up, it should be fine.