He played the move three times in his 1908 world championship match against Tarrasch, scoring two wins and a draw.
Here is their third encounter:
Emanuel Lasker - Siegbert Tarrasch
World Championship 1908 Game 11
French McCutcheon
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5
Lasker in his career also played 4.e5, 4.Bd3 and (once) 4.exd5, but the text was overwhelmingly his most-common response to the Classical.
4...Bb4
Tarrasch replied with the McCutcheon in all three games.
5.exd5
Lasker played the somewhat obscure 5.Bd3 in games seven and nine, winning the first but being held to a draw in the second. The main move - then and today - is 5.e5.
5...Qxd5
This active queen recapture is very much in Tarrasch's style of liking piece-play, eg after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 in the Steinitz Variation of the French Classical he advocated 5.Nf3 rather than shoring up the centre with 5.f4.
6.Nf3!?
Lasker three times played 6.Bxf6 in his 1907 world championship massacre of Marshall, but 'only' scored a win and two draws (the match finished in Lasker's favour +8=7-0).
6...c5 7.Bxf6 gxf6 8.Qd2
White has given up the bishop-pair but weakened Black's kingside.
8...Bxc3
8...Qd6 was tried in Leonid Totsky (2550) - Sergey Koutsin (2415), Rýmařov (Czechia) 1999, but after 9.a3 Black felt obliged to return the bishop-pair anyway with 9...Bxc3. The further moves 10.Qxc3 Nd7 11.0-0-0 gave White a strong attacking position, according to the analysis engines Stockfish11 and Komodo11.01 (1-0, 26 moves).
9.Qxc3 Nd7?!
The engines much prefer 9...Qe4+, as played by Vidmar in a draw against Leonhardt at the 1906 German chess championship in Nürnberg.
10.Rd1
The engines reckon even stronger is the messy-looking 10.0-0-0!? Qxa2 11.dxc5!? Qa1+ 12.Kd2.
10...Rg8 11.dxc5 Qxc5 12.Qd2
Lasker believes his king will be safer than Black's, and anyway 12.Qxc5?! Nxc5 frees the black position.
12...Qb6 13.c3 a6 14.Qc2 f5!?
Indirectly protecting h7 and creating a possible central outpost square at e4, but weakening the kingside dark squares.
15.g3 Nc5 16.Bg2 Qc7
Planning to fianchetto his remaining bishop.
17.Qe2 b5 18.0-0 Bb7
 |
| How should White proceed? |
*****
*****
*****
*****
*****
19.c4!
The white king looks pretty safe, so Lasker seeks to open lines to get at the uncastled black king.
19...b4 20.Qd2 Rb8
Indirectly defending b4 (21.Qxb4?? loses to 21...Bxf3), but now Lasker invades on the kingside.
21.Qh6 Bxf3 22.Bxf3 Qe5
Indirectly defending h7 (23.Qxh7?? loses to 23...Rh8) and attacking b2, but the key to this position is White's better piece-coordination and Black's unsafe king.
23.Rfe1 Qxb2 24.Qf4 Rc8 25.Qd6 f6
This does not help, but there is no way to save Black's position.
26.Bh5+ Rg6 27.Bxg6+ hxg6 28.Rxe6+ 1-0
No comments:
Post a Comment