Round 4 vs AMARS: Board 3

Another very interesting game with a very good positional lessons and a beautiful tactical moment.

Pradeepan played the Philidor, which is known to be sound but a bit congested for black.

after 6.c3

Here black was faced with a decision how to continue his development. Two obvious candidate moves to consider are Nc6 and Bg4.  Turns out pinning the f3 knight with Bg4 does not accomplish anything. Black has to strive to open the center and gain space not to get choked.  For this purpose Nc6 is helpful. The idea is a temporary piece sack with Ne4, the piece is then recovered with a d5 fork.  Now Nc6 makes sense because if black wants to do this then after d5 the e5 pawn is hanging, so Nc6 is needed.

after 7. ... exd

Black to on d4 which was a serious mistake. It enables white to take full control of the center. Naturally white takes back and gets the good c3 square to develop his b1 knight. Then he is in control of all the green squares.

Black I presume was still playing on his plan to utilize the pin of the f3 knight. Pradeepan continued with Nc6 and then traded on f3 to open up the white king side.  The result was the following position:

after 10. gxf

It turns out there is now way black will profit from this due to lack of control on the kind side. Clearly white controls the red squares, and if he drops back his c4 bishop to f1 he has control of the yellow squares as well. In the mean time black only has the green f5 square and no way to prevent f4. On top of it with black so unable to play on the king side white will and can play Kh1 followed by Rg1.

In short the mistake black made, was to sacrifice center control for the opening up of whites kings side position without having prepared influence and attacking chances on the king side. The lesson for me is, if I strive to open my opponents pawn structure around his king I must assure influence on the resulting weak squares, otherwise I have nothing.

Four moves later the following position was reached:

after 14. Rg1

Some nice tactics here! Clearly its getting uncomfortable for black. Could black give a piece for three pawns with 14. ... Nxf5  15. Bxf4 Bxf2  16. Rf1 Bxd4?  Looks good, right?  But white can strike back, how?