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The Comeback Clearing the road for the knight
By GM LEV ALBURT
LUCAS ANDERSON WAS OUT OF BOOK on move one, being barely familiar with the French. A few moves later he blun- dered and lost two pawns. He kept fighting and, when his opponent misplaced his pieces, Lucas struck with a piece sacrifice. His opponent—very quickly and unwisely— grabbed that Trojan ... well, bishop. From there on, Lucas played very well—a lot to learn from.
Writes Lucas: I played the following game at a tourna-
ment last weekend and I think it shows a good comeback. The file below is anno- tated, but in the spirit of your column I will expand somewhat on the commentary. This was my first match ever at a big tournament with a long time control, in this case G/120 d5. I have not had much success with G/25 d5 tournaments, and my performance at blitz is terrible. But I thoroughly enjoy correspondence chess, where I have much longer to consider moves. My performance is much stronger when I have more time to calculate, so I looked forward to this tournament. I ended up getting paired against stronger players in every round, but finished 21
⁄2 /5 to
improve my rating from 1470 to 1529. The game started with the French
Defense. My knowledge of opening theory is limited to just a few openings, and the French is not one of them. I favor the Advance Variation because White seems to want to claim territory with d4, so why not claim more with e4-e5? My move order is shaky but I have most of the main ideas right: Nf3 to support both pawns, c2-c3 to cement the pawn chain. However, I had never seen ... Qb6 in this system and per- ceived it only as a diagonal attacker on d4, missing the vertical threat on b2. I quickly got behind and focused solely on survival. 8. Bb5 is an attempt to castle soon to get out of the pin, and Rc1 is a fairly weak attempt to chase the queen away. When my opponent played ... Nge7, I saw a pow- erful square for my knight, and a tempo on the queen to get there. I spent about 10 minutes calculating the bishop sacrifice before pulling the trigger. My opponent
18 February 2014 | Chess Life
only spent about 30 seconds before recap- turing with the pawn. I discussed this with him after the match, and he antici- pated rook recapturing pawn. Incidentally, I showed this position to FM Warren Harper and he saw 12. Bxc4 in a split second. What follows Bxc4 are 13 consecutive
moves that I feel are my best possible ones. I recalled lessons I had recently learned from FM Harper’s lecture on how to continue the attack with the bishop sacrifice 21. Bg5!. The aftermath of these strong moves is a winning position which I have some trouble converting, but with a few good tactics to win two minor pieces, I focus on my passed center pawns to pro- mote my way to victory. I felt on several occasions that there should have been a mating pattern in there somewhere (later an engine confirmed this), but I focused more on not losing to a back-rank mate or incurring a stalemate. As this was my first-round match, I approached later matches with more confidence.
French Defense, Advance Variation (C02) Lucas Anderson (1470) Sam Dillon (1670) Center64: National Chess Day Tournament (1), 10.11.2013
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5
same position as in this game. 4. ... Qb6 5. c3 Nc6
The line with ... Qb6 is Black’s main line,
and the diagrammed position is the most popular “tabiya” (a common position ~ed.) in the Advanced French. White plays here 6. Bd3 (leading to pawn sacrifices), 6. Be2 or 6. a3.
6. Be3?
A blunder. I miscounted attackers and defenders on d4 and missed 6. ... Qxb2.
6. ... Qxb2 7. Nbd2 Qxc3 8. Bb5 Bd7 9. Rc1 Qa5 10. a4 c4 11. 0-0
11. ... Nge7?
4. Nf3 More common here is 4. c3, often fol-
lowed by 4. ... Qb6 5. Nf3—achieving the
An inaccuracy. My plan is to get the knight to d6. 12. Bxc4! dxc4 As Lucas wrote in his letter, his opponent
played this terrible move in about 30 sec-
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