Spanton (1906/171) - Wolfgang Jekel (1682/148)
Scandinavian Defence, Tiviakov Variation
1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd6
This centralising retreat was popularised by Tiviakov, athough it goes back to at least the 1960s, and has been played by Kasparov, Carlsen and Caruana.
4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 c6 6.g3
The main line involves harassing Black's queen by 6.Ne5!? Nbd7 7.Nc4 Qc7 8.Qf3 Nb6 9.Bf4. White scores almost 59% from this position in ChessBase's 2019 Mega database, but both Tiviakov and Kasparov were happy to defend Black's cause.
6...Bg4 7.Bg2 e6 8.h3 Bxf3 9.Qxf3!?
 |
| All 33 games in Mega19 featured 9.Bxf3 rather than this pawn sac |
The idea of this move is to meet Bf4 with Bd6. However, clearly critical is 9...Qxd4. After 10.Be3 I felt White's bishop-pair and lead in development would give decent compensation.
10.Bf4 Bd6 11.Bxd6 Qxd6
Black offered a draw.
12.0-0-0 Nbd7 13.Rhe1 0-0-0 14.Rd3
I gave a fair bit of consideration to 14.Nb5!? but could not see that White was achieving much after 14...Qb8.
14...Nb6 15.Ne4
Again Nb5 was possible but, if anything, is less effective than on the previous move.
15...Nxe4 16.Rxe4 Nd5?
A bold but faulty pawn sac. White is only a little better after 16...Rd7, according to Stockfish10 and Komodo9.
17.Qxf7 Rhe8?!
Objectively better was 17...Rhf8 but 18.Qxe6+ Qxe6 19.Rxe6 Rxf2 gives Black no compensation for his pawn minus after 20.Rd2 or 20.Bxd5.
18.Qxg7 Nb4 19.Ra3 a6 20.Qe5 (1-0, 44 moves)
No comments:
Post a Comment