The below game is from round 1 of this year's (still currently ongoing) Tata Steel tournament. I selected it because Anand adopts an aggressive setup as Black in the Caro-Kann Exchange Variation that is deliberately designed to cause interesting dynamic and structural imbalances. Essentially Black wants to exchange bishops on f5 and thereby open the g-file, while castling queenside. I find Black's typical ideas to be more straightforward and understandable, although not necessarily easy to execute. The dark-square weakness and White's space on the queenside serve to counterbalance things and engines give White a small plus out of the opening. However, in the middlegame White runs out of productive ideas, then critically weakens his own dark squares, after which Black finds a threat using his advanced doubled f-pawn that White cannot handle. Anand's finish is quite strong and worthy of remembering.
27 January 2019
Commentary: Tata Steel 2019, Round 1 (Van Foreest - Anand)
As mentioned in my previous game post, I'll again start working in commentary on master-level games to my rotation of training analysis. I think it's useful to alternate that with analysis of your own games, at least to some extent. Different lessons can be learned, in part because the overall quality of play tends to be (much) higher. I've found that with master games, often it's analyzing why they didn't play a particular line that is illuminating, in addition to critical turning points in games.
The below game is from round 1 of this year's (still currently ongoing) Tata Steel tournament. I selected it because Anand adopts an aggressive setup as Black in the Caro-Kann Exchange Variation that is deliberately designed to cause interesting dynamic and structural imbalances. Essentially Black wants to exchange bishops on f5 and thereby open the g-file, while castling queenside. I find Black's typical ideas to be more straightforward and understandable, although not necessarily easy to execute. The dark-square weakness and White's space on the queenside serve to counterbalance things and engines give White a small plus out of the opening. However, in the middlegame White runs out of productive ideas, then critically weakens his own dark squares, after which Black finds a threat using his advanced doubled f-pawn that White cannot handle. Anand's finish is quite strong and worthy of remembering.
The below game is from round 1 of this year's (still currently ongoing) Tata Steel tournament. I selected it because Anand adopts an aggressive setup as Black in the Caro-Kann Exchange Variation that is deliberately designed to cause interesting dynamic and structural imbalances. Essentially Black wants to exchange bishops on f5 and thereby open the g-file, while castling queenside. I find Black's typical ideas to be more straightforward and understandable, although not necessarily easy to execute. The dark-square weakness and White's space on the queenside serve to counterbalance things and engines give White a small plus out of the opening. However, in the middlegame White runs out of productive ideas, then critically weakens his own dark squares, after which Black finds a threat using his advanced doubled f-pawn that White cannot handle. Anand's finish is quite strong and worthy of remembering.
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