Amazing how time flies. Just thinking how long it's actually been since I first played the following opening, and that months after playing on chess.com, but that already years ago now.
I was deliberately playing the worst opening I could think of.
I'd heard in chess you should play toward the center; here I do the direct opposite. If playing center was good, what could be worse than playing the extreme ends of the board to start? It was my own device, I figured no one good would deliberately choose to play like that, shock value or no. I wanted to learn how to get out of difficult situations while playing actual good players.
But chess.com introduced a feature where you could review games and the website would give a simple analysis of what you did. They named things in this evaluation; I learned to my surprise my personal opening was something someone HAD played seriously before, and it even had a name: the Ware Defense. I learned today that is for Preston Ware, and he played and beat some of the masters of yesteryear, including a guy named Steinitz.
Steinitz nearly single-handedly re-ignited my love for chess with an Evans Gambit game dubbed "Steinitz v Rock". Sometime soon I might show that game; it's pretty inspiring if you're a novice player. (At least it was to me.)
At any rate, the following game has me playing as Black starting out with a5 as my response to White's opening move, aka the Ware Defense. I don't think it's a particularly good game even though I beat an opponent ranked nearly 200 points higher than myself;I found this interesting instead, though, for how clearly and classically the game is developed by my opponent.
It's practically a textbook illustration:
Pawns to center, followed by knights to center.
Then bishop out to make room for castling.
Then he castles.
He's got pieces developed, and the center controlled, and his king in a little fortress for defense.
All I seem to have done is march a pawn down either edge of the board, developing nothing, with a king that sits and watches instead of moving to safety, and then sits and watches some more ...
In actuality, I've not simply marched 2 pawns up.
On my right side, I've got a ladder of pawns supporting the furthest advanced pawn on that side, and it's halting him from doing much.
It's also opened up diagonals for both bishops and my queen to shift and move fairly freely. And that pawn marched all the way up on my left side is trouble for him on SEVERAL accounts. One, if I can get a Queen diagonally in front of it, it's a serious mate threat; jail if I can get a bishop there. Taking it with his knight pawn would destroy the center "wall" of his castle; letting it take the pawn does nearly the same. So he wisely opts to expand:
Queen and bishops are still a problem. That pawn of mine NEEDS to go.
What good is center control if his King at the edge will be open to a one-move capture? So he has his knights abandon their position and move over to deal with my pawn while his King makes room for both his Knights:
I harass and drive away his bishop. It's not really to drive away his bishop, it's instead to give my knight safe space to advance:
He uses the opportunity to manuever his knight to take that problematic pawn, but merely having my own knight advance once more gives the rook the chance to guard it again.
At this point my opponent's idea seems to be to "double" his own Queen and bishop to get my knight to move.
He REALLY wants that pawn gone.
But, in doing that, unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have considered what the effect of my knight moving would be.
That pawn of mine wasn't the ONLY threat ...
Originally posted by rudester
I was just watching super girl meets flash
👆
