Friday, 13 April 2018

Scoring 100%

ONE of the funny things about chess is that there are some openings I enjoy playing against, but when I come to check my results, I find they are nowhere near as good as I fondly imagine.
Conversely, there are other openings I feel uncomfortable against, but my results are surprisingly good.
I am sure I am not alone in feeling this way.
Last night was a good example, when I played on top board for Battersea 3 against London Deaf in division two of the Central London League.

Spanton (163) - Neil Dunlop (161)
1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd6
Black's queen is more centrally placed than after the other common third moves,  ...Qa5 and ...Qd8, but also more prone to harassment by White's minor pieces
Sergei Tiviakov helped popularise 3...Qd6, although the move goes back at least to 1968 - five years before he was born.
4.d4 Nf6
One of my games saw 4...Nc6?, a move that has been chosen by at least two 2500+ players. Black is already in serious trouble after the reply 5.Nb5.
5.Nf3 c6 6.g3
The main line goes 6.Ne5 Nbd7 7.Nc4 Qc7 8.Qf3, with an initiative.
6...Bf5 7.Bg2 h6
Black prepares a retreat for the bishop, which suggests White should seriously consider pre-empting this with 7.Nh4!?
8.0-0 e6 9.Re1 Be7 10.Bf4 Qd8
So Black's queen ends up on d8 anyway.
More active was the double-edged 10...Qb4!?
11.Qe2 0-0 12.Rad1
White has a huge lead in development after 12.Rad1
White has more space and has developed all his pieces to active squares, while Black has yet to get his queen, queen's knight and rooks into play.
Despite this, my main analysis engines reckon the position is equal; Stockfish9 even minutely prefers Black.
Older (for which, read weaker) engines are more sympathetic to White's set-up. Crafty19 and Fritz5.32, for example, give White a tiny edge.
I guess the point is that Black has no weaknesses and will be able to complete development without making positional concessions.
Nevertheless, I think White's position is easier to play, and the game seemed to bear that out (1-0, 56 moves).
Checking the opening today, I see I have scored +4=0-0 against 3...Qd6, +2=0-0 against 3...Qd8, and a non-perfect, but still respectable, +8=7-3 (64%) against 3...Qa5.
And yet I know I have felt uncomfortable facing the Scandinavian, hence why I have sometimes met 1.e4 d5 with 2.d4 (scoring +2=0-1).
As the great Greavsie was wont to say about another pastime: "It's a funny old game."

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