This final-round game in the Stonewall Dutch features highly entertaining, if not particularly accurate, play. The main battleground is the kingside and the f-file, largely due to White's strategic choices. I do quite well out of this as Black and by move 18 have a decisive advantage built up on the board. This is also the point where I start missing chances to dominate on the queenside as well, focusing solely on kingside play.
The Dutch (in its various forms) often possesses this strategic tension, in which Black needs to properly evaluate if/when to switch to queenside play, or (in the Stonewall especially) when to dissolve the central pawn structure to obtain an advantage (see move 24). These kinds of decisions I expect will become easier with more experience; the below was only my third tournament game with a Stonewall.
In the game, I come late to the party on the queenside and take a kind of caveman approach to it, which results in my opponent getting a dangerous, then what should be a winning, attack on the kingside. Nevertheless, I don't give up, find a key defensive exchange sacrifice, distract my opponent with active defense, and at the end of a long, exhausting battle play a queen fork that ends the game.
I'll follow up in a later post with some reflections on the overall lessons learned from this tournament and the previous one, which when combined led me to break through the Class A ratings barrier.
The Dutch (in its various forms) often possesses this strategic tension, in which Black needs to properly evaluate if/when to switch to queenside play, or (in the Stonewall especially) when to dissolve the central pawn structure to obtain an advantage (see move 24). These kinds of decisions I expect will become easier with more experience; the below was only my third tournament game with a Stonewall.
In the game, I come late to the party on the queenside and take a kind of caveman approach to it, which results in my opponent getting a dangerous, then what should be a winning, attack on the kingside. Nevertheless, I don't give up, find a key defensive exchange sacrifice, distract my opponent with active defense, and at the end of a long, exhausting battle play a queen fork that ends the game.
I'll follow up in a later post with some reflections on the overall lessons learned from this tournament and the previous one, which when combined led me to break through the Class A ratings barrier.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments and ideas on chess training and this site are welcomed.
Please note that moderation is turned on as an anti-spam measure; your comment will be published as soon as possible, if it is not spam.