The academic year has come to a close, and in the final meeting of the university chess club I have overseen for the past five years I played a number of blitz games with the highest-rated student in the club. While he’s quite a good player - around 1900-2000 in strength - his openings aren’t generally his strong suit, and when he played a variation of the Caro-Kann I hadn’t seen before I assumed it was another random experiment or spontaneous inspiration on his part.
My standard operating procedure in such situations, particularly when playing someone lower-rated than I am, is to assume that they’ve done something wrong and look to punish it. It’s the advice I give my students (and now to all of you, dear readers): when you’re in an opening line you know pretty well and face something brand new, assume your opponent has erred and try to figure out what’s wrong with it. Of course, you should also treat the idea with some respect: figure out how it fits with the plans (for both sides) you’re aware of. Does it impede your plans in some way, or help your opponent with his usual ideas? Still, having done that, see if you can bust it.
That’s what I tried to do, but in that first game I didn’t achieve anything special, and was soon even a little unhappy with my position. I eventually won, but not thanks to my “brilliant” play in the opening. The second game went better, but it still wasn’t any sort of bust of my opponent’s variation. In my third white game I tried something else; again, no real success from a theoretical standpoint. In the fourth game I was happier about the opening, but also saw ways that my opponent could have improved.
I was a little disappointed and discouraged when the games were over. How could my opponent get away with this dubious idea four games in a row, and how could I not figure out any way to obtain an advantage? Age catches up to us all, and apparently this was one of those small greeting cards we all receive from the Grim Reaper from time to time, reminding us of our mortality.
Needless to say, one of the first things I did upon going home was to open a board in ChessBase, flip on the engine and turn on the online database, and wait for Stockfish and GM practice - if my opponent’s silly idea had even been played in a GM game - to demonstrate what a more competent white player would have found. To my shock, I found that…
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