Grand Prix Attack - win for Black

Here we see a convincing win against the Grand Prix Attack from my colleague Steve. He's had plenty of practice against me over the last 3 or 4 years, so I somewhat pitied his opponent! Having played the Grand Prix attack quite a bit myself I feel that White simply wasn't agressive enough in this game after 13.Qf2? Nd4 and White is on the back foot. I will perform some analysis on Fritz and post my comments.

From what I understand, these positions need to be double edged. I like to think that I gave Black more of a game in the Grand Prix attack in my recent club game (see my next post).

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. f4 e6 4. Bc4 a6 5. d3 Nge7 6. Nf3 g6 7. O-O Bg7 8. Qe1 O-O 9. a3 b5 10. Ba2 d5 11. exd5 exd5 12. Bd2 Bb7 13. Qf2 Nd4 14. Rac1 Qd6 15. Bb1 Rae8 16. Rce1 Nef5 17. Nh4 Nxh4 18. Qxh4 Nf5 19. Qh3 c4 20. Nd1 Rxe1 21. Rxe1 Qc6 22. dxc4 dxc4 23. c3 Rd8 24. Bc1 Bc8 25. Bxf5 Bxf5 26. Qe3 Bf8 27. Qg3 Rd3 28. Be3 Bc5 29. Nf2 Bxe3 30. Rxe3 Rd2 31. Qg5 Qc5 32. Re8+ Kg7 33. Qg3 Rd1# 0-1

PGN Viewer courtesy of http://chesstempo.com/

You vs Bobby Fischer

You need to improve your tactical vision but how ... ? I find that the best exercise is to find some really complicated tactical positions and try and make some sense of them. This exercise book provides the perfect opportunity to study some really tricky, double edged positions! I would advise spending a maximum of 20 minutes on each position - the idea is to provide an initial evaluation of the position followed by analysis of the 4 candidate moves provided. It's worth noting that there might be more than one correct answer - you may be correct in more than one case - but you have to show how you arrived at your conclusion. It's a little like a maths exam at school, you may have arrrived at the wrong answer but if your technique and accompanying thought process was sound and you showed how you arrived at your answer then you are still awarded some marks. Khmelnitsky has devised a very novel and clever way of weighting the model answers. He awards marks according to a concensus of opinion of Grandmasters and strong players. I have found it particularly useful to see how I compared with the wider concensus - in some cases I found the correct answer and scored 1 point and a win, in others my reasoning was slightly flawed and I was only awarded half a point and a draw. In a few cases I scored 0 ... At the end of the book I can check my ELO rating based on my score in the tests.

This book is well worth it for achieving better calculation skills and improved tactical vision. Recommended for budding juniors and intermediate club players.


You vs Bobby Fischer