In one of your latest columns, you answered the question of why you play your knight back to its original square on its starting move. Then, you said that the reason behind a3 and h3 were whole different columns. This is probably true, but could you give your readers a synopsis anyway? Those moves, too, seem to break a lot of opening rules.
|
|
Yes, the moves 1 h3 and 2 a3 break some opening rules. This is the Global Opening, pioneered mainly by Michael Basman from England. Here is some of his thinking: after 1 h3 e5 2 a3 d5, Black has now exposed his king by moving the two center pawns and will have to castle somewhere. Whichever way he castles, white will have a possible attack started with the rook pawn advance. White will try to control the center by attacking it from both sides in a pinscher-like maneuver . This is not my approach to the opening. I prefer to treat it like a reversed Sicilian with the addition of the move h3, which prevents some annoying lines based on ...Bg4. This option is not available to black in the normal Sicilian, but with the extra tempo it is playable as white. Believe me, the player of the black pieces can get mighty frustrated when 10-15 moves into the game white has a decent position (after making what arguably could be two of the worst moves possible. Also the Global Opening cannot be said to create any weaknesses......just the "waste" of time. But look at the NimzoIndian: 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4. The whole concept of this opening is a fight for control of e4....Black is pinning the knight on c3 for this reason. With the Global Opening, this kind of thing cannot take place, so: Can the Global Opening be thought of as a nice weapon to control the center? Maybe this is stretching logic to its boundaries, but look at this game:
BACKSTAB-Brady 1999 Chicago Open 1 h3 e5 2 a3 d5 3 e3 Nf6 4 c4 c6 5 b4 Be6 6 cd cd 7 Bb2 Nbd7 8 Nf3 Bd6 9 Be2 Rc8 10 0-0 0-0 11 d3 h6 12 Nbd2 Qc7 13 Rc1 Qb8 14 Rc8 Rc8 15 Qb1 Nh7 16 Re1Nf6 17 Bf1 drawn
|
|
I'm in trouble because I don't really know what one pawn is worth. Many good players even give that away just that they could bring a few pieces faster on the game. So I want you to tell me that after moves: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c5 3. dxc5 e6 4. cxd5 Bxc5 5. dxe6 Qxd1 6. Kxd1 Bxe6 7. e3 Nc6.. Who has the advantage? White leads with one pawn, but Black owns a huge advantage in deveploment. And White can not even castle. So tell me, which side you would want to be? Thanks!
|
|
I would rather be Black in this position. A general rule of thumb is that a pawn is worth about three tempi-----and black is dvery close to being 4 tempi ahead here because white will have to spend more moves to safeguard his king.
|
I was wondering, how can studying postions or middlegames
improve my play if i never run into the same positions or middlegames I've studied. And HOW do I study the middlegames?
|
|
Chess is a game of pattern recognition....similar ideas can occur in a variety of set-ups. To be familiar with as many as possible will help you even if you're not in the EXACT position. It is said that a Master is familiar with about 50,000 positions.
For studying middlegames, nothing beats game collections by the great players. Also I would reccomend the Encyclopedia of Middlegames.....published by the same peopel that put out the great "Sahovski Informators" or Chess Informants
|
