Lessons From Magdeburg II

IN round two I was White against Jürgen Gottschalk (1711), who chose to play the Steinitz Defence to the Spanish: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 d6.

The defence is certainly playable - indeed, there are are 21,760 examples of 3...d6 in ChessBase's 2026 Mega database.

But it is surely no coincidence that Black's miserable score of 32% is significantly below Black's score of more than 40% with most other third-move continuations, including ...a6, ...Nf6, ...Bc5, ...f5, ...Nge7 and ...g6.

After 4.d4 exd4 (Stockfish18 and Dragon1 reckon this is better than Steinitz's preferred 4...Bd7) 5.Nxd4 Bd7 6.0-0 Nf6 7.Nc3 Be7, a position reached 2,665 times in Mega26, White has at least a slight edge (Stockfish18) or even the upper hand (Dragon1).

Position after 7...Be7

Black was positionally lost just four moves later, according to the engines, and never recovered.

LESSON: if you choose a defence that statistics suggest is suspect, you must know what you are doing, as otherwise it is easy to quickly drift into a lost position.