Bird Defense Fishing Pole

Black to play
What's the best move to continue the attack?

I have annotated the game Balakrishnan - Goeller, KCC Summer Tourney 2011, from which comes the diagram above. 


On Thursday night I played young Praveen Balakrishnan in Round 6 of the Kenilworth Chess Club summer tourney, employing my favorite Bird Defense to the Ruy Lopez. For the second week in a row, I found myself sacrificing material for a direct attack on my opponent's king. In this case, I employed what Brian Wall likes to call "the fishing pole" theme: dangling my Knight at g4 for capture in order to open the h-file. My young opponent, who obviously had never been hooked before, gobbled the Knight and went down to speedy defeat. At least it is very unlikely he will ever fall for that trap again.


Brian Wall plays the Fishing Pole via the Berlin Defense with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Ng4!? trying to provoke 5.h3 h5! and the bait has been set and is hard to resist.  See Lee - Wall, Kansas Open 2007 for a nice illustration.  Wall has posted endless examples of his "Fishing Pole" online and in the Unorthodox Openings Yahoo group. If you have a spare 15 minutes or so, it's worth checking out his Fishing Pole: First Blood Part 1 and Part 2 on Youtube, which examine a game where GM Walter Browne lost to the Fishing Pole in a simul, intercutting scenes from Rambo for dramatic effect.  If nothing else, it will definitely help you to resist the bait yourself!

John Cox on Lasker's Defense

UPDATED: I was very interested to see Lasker's Defense featured prominently in John Cox's just released Declining the Queen's Gambit (Everyman 2011), available from Amazon.  I don't think there has been a good book on the Lasker in over a decade, and certainly none from the Black perspective.  Based on the excellent sample pages (download the PDF file from the Wayback Machine), which give the entire Lasker Defense chapter (thanks, Katar, for pointing that out), I'd say it looks like a great book and one which, together with Cox's earlier Dealing with d4 Deviations, offers a complete repertoire for Black against 1.d4.  I look forward to reading it more closely.


Check out some posts in these pages related to Lasker's Defense:

• Kavalek on Anand and Lasker's Defense
• Lasker's Defense to the Queen's Gambit Declined (includes bibliography)
• Lasker's Defense to the Queen's Gambit Webliography

The Kernighan Experience

Goeller - Kernighan
White to play.

I have annotated Goeller - Kernighan, KCC Summer Tourney 2011, from Thursday night.   As often happens in my games with Mark, I sacrificed material to drive his King into the open and had a great attack going until I lost on time.  I call this "the Kernighan experience."  You might prefer to call it "repetition compulsion." But I found the experience very enjoyable despite the potentially traumatic result.  Always in my games with Mark I am reaching toward Tal-like artistry, but that perfect game remains always just outside my grasp.  I came pretty close this time to grabbing it, which was satisfaction enough for me.


Before we started, Ian Mangion (seated at the next board) joked that I should definitely play for a sac at f7 as he had done in a recent win over Mark.  At that point, I decided to try the Cochrane Gambit if Mark went in for his usual Petroff. When Mark played the Caro-Kann, however, I said to Ian, "Oh well, no f7 sac." But the idea was definitely planted in my head and likely influenced my play in the game.  In the diagrammed position above, I began my attack by playing 12.f5! exf5 13.Nxf5 gxf5 14.Nxf7!!

John Bryant's Tactics

Bryant - Shen, Round One
White to play

Bryant - Sturt, Round Three
White to play

Bryant - Ding, Round Four
White to play

Troff - Bryant, Round Seven
Black to play

Bryant - Naroditsky, Round Eight
White to play

I have posted tactical puzzles from the games of FM John Bryant from the recent 2011 US Junior Championship in Saint Louis.  Though he finished 7th out of 10, Bryant's games were always tactically interesting, and it is telling that he was one of the only players with no draws (5 wins and 4 losses).  Bryant's swashbuckling attacking play was not always sound, but it produced some very nice finishes, represented above.  Most of the puzzles are fairly easy, except for the last which requires some judgment of the resulting ending.  More about the championship, won by Andrew Young (who finished two points ahead of the field), can be found online:

• Official site and crosstable
• Young Winner at US Junior
• Young Clinches US Junior Championship in St Louis
• Bay Area Showdown in St Louis

Chess Wars

Fredb1978 has posted all of the cut scenes from Chess Wars: A Medieval Fantasy (DOS 1996).  It is rather disturbing to watch all of the possible "murders" that can be committed on the chessboard. And you have to wonder if medieval combat to the death is the most compelling storyline that can get mapped onto this abstract game.  But it is an interesting historical example of how designers have tried to jazz up chess for digital game play.  I have previously only seen the opening sequence from the game (see second video above).  The concept of having scenes to accompany each capture clearly inspired Lego Chess, though the latter has a much more fun attitude (more appropriate for children).