Not a fan of the 3...c5 stuff?

I've got a question about a position if y'all wouldn't mind helping.



This position came from a 15-min game I played a couple of nights ago. I'm playing black, and we arrived at this position after 8. Ne5 Nxe5 9. dxe5. Here I played 9...Ne4, with the idea of playing the knight back to g5 and e6 whenever it needs to retreat.

After the game, I ran this position through Chessbase, and there are only 15 games after 9. dxe5. In the diagrammed position, black played 9...Nd7 thirteen out of the fifteen games. Play continued 9...Nd7 10. d4 f6. Here's a diagram for my question.



There are only 4 games here, and white played 11. Bf3 in three and 11. Nc3 in one. My question is, as white, is 11. exf6 a legitimate option? Seems like a fairly natural move to me, but no one has played it so I'm curious as to why. Who do y'all think has better chances in the resulting position?

...e6 is a concession from Black, because he will have trouble with his light squared bishop which otherwise might be quite good on f5 or e4. So exf6 looks like a candidate move, but once you see Bf3 it looks clearly better. If Black gives you the d-pawn with 11...fxe5 12. Bxd5+ Kh8 13. Rxf8+ Qxf8 14. dxc5! Nxc5 White has the better pieces and the better pawns. Otherwise he has to play e6.

This is only really true if 11. exf6 Nxf6 12. dxc5 is OK for Black though, since after other recaptures you might transpose with Bf3 next...maybe White is just a pawn up, since 12...Qc7 13. Qd4! looks annoying

Man that was a great explanation. Seriously, thanks for that.

I managed to win the rapid event! I'm going to copy wlrs and present a highlights reel.

Round 1: very easy win in 17 moves, nothing to see here.

Round 2: Black against a solid 2100 guy. We reach the following position:



He is going to play f4 next, and while I'm certainly comfortable enough with the a-file, I decided to mix it up: 1...Ra2!? 2.Nc3 Rxb2 3.Rxb2 Nexc4 4.Rc2 Na3 5.Ra2 Bxc3 6.Rxa3 Bd4 reaching the following position:



One pawn for the exchange, but the bishop on d4 is a monster. I think Black has a very reasonable position. Actually later on I was completely lost, but swindled the win when we down to our last minute each

Round 3: Black vs 2300 FM.





Round 4: White vs 2000.

http://chess.tuxtown.net/game/view/i...306854a134986e

After a bit of a trainwreck opening (I completely forgot I can't do the standard 10.Nd5 Nxe4 11.Qxb4 because d5 is hanging!) I found this interesting 13.Nc5 idea. I guess he missed Qxd7+ because then I'm up a pawn. 23...Rb8 was annoying, stopping my plan of playing c3. I'm pretty happy with my move 24.g4!?, I'm not sure how good it is objectively but it operates on the principle of opening up a second front of attack. Anyway it provoked him to move his knight after which I got in c3 and won pretty easily from there.

Round 5: Black vs 1950. Yeah, I got a really nice draw! The FM I drew with in round 3 took out the one IM, so now it was just a case of both of us trying not to mess up against lower rated opposition. My game was crazy, and went down to the last seconds again. Here is the game, although I can't remember the last few moves where I'm easily winning and just need to beat the clock.

http://chess.tuxtown.net/game/view/i...8902f6d966bc99

Fortunately for me, the FM got into a lost position. He somehow escaped with a draw, but that was enough to win me the event.

Congratz!

Nice. 2p2 on a roll OTB .

Congrats goldaxe, that's excellent. And thanks for posting the games too, very interesting.

Good job, agree that the exchange sac in game 1 is a very good practical choice for a rapid game. Against the KG I don't like the 2.-d5 stuff since White actually often gets a reasonable position
I just went through my Black prep last week, since the 2320 guy had played the KG before (too bad he didn't this time) and it consisted of the following primary directions:
2.f4 ef 3.Bc4 Nc6
3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 Bg7 and possibly the most playable for White is 5.0-0 d6 6.d4 Nc6 7.c3 h6 8.Qa4 Na5 9.Bxf7+ Kf8 10.Qa3 Kxf7 11.Qxa5 and now c5 has been played before but Kg6-Kh7 seemed like fun.
3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 d6 6.Nxg4 Be7 and I think this is easy enough to play as Black without much preparation (7.d4 Bxh4+ 8.Nf2 Qg5)

Hi guys,

I just found this thread today and I like it pretty much.

I haven't read all the pages until now, but it seems pretty interesting to I want to take part a bit.

On the last pages where some tactical problems and players who had trouble with that.


I just would like to point out that if somebody has difficultys with tactical problems I would recommend trying to find solution for "real" tactical problems who appeared maybe in the own games or games of friends. "Constructed" problems or the one of World class players aren't the problems you should focus on.

Anyway I guess I can give some problems out of my own games.


This position was from a tournament I won last year with 4/5.



I just won a pawn some moves before, cause black was in timetrouble and was trying to create at least some counterplay.


It's White to move.

Can it really be

Close , but not exactly right.

you missed

This is the right solution, but in order to make that winning you have to see both threats because just one could be defended against.

This would also be good but you can do your original threat better.

Good idea.


What happend in the game was:

Here is another interesting situation.


I used this position in one of club training sessions.

At first I'll let you try to find the best moves for black and tell you more later about this.

I'm very interested if anybody will find the best moves for black. This is a somewhat tricky situation.

Great and absolutely correct. Key move is the last one, without that it won't work!

What's your ELO?

Yeah got that after 5-10 minutes, mostly by method of elimination as everything else seemed bad

Yeah, that's true almost everything seems bad, but you have to know the difference between that what looks bad and is lost and that what looks bad but is a draw.

In this case like I mentioned you have to know or find out that the last move is totally necessary. If you play any other move white would win!

Ordered some summer readings: Positional Decision Making by Gelfand/Aagaard and the Petrosian annotated games compilation Python Strategy (both by Quality Chess). Expecting at least +100 ELO per book