Brooding
I've been brooding over my loss at chess club on Tuesday. It's driven me to memorize 2 Smith-Morra master game wins for White to help me avoid making opening mistakes when I play it again. I plan to memorize some more until I cover the most common responses to the system.
I even got up from bed last night to go work some more tactics problems. I'm in the Surprise Moves chapter of Reinfeld's book now, which I'm finding to be the most difficult problem set of the lot. I've worked over 800 of the 1001 problems at this point and have done 7 mini-circles on 756 of them. I know I need to work on strategy (which I still do at lunchtime), but I've got to get past tactics first. It just won't make sense to drill on strategy until I get tactics mastered. That would be like spending a lot of effort determining what needs to be done before knowing how to do it. I need to know how to do it, first.
Kind of off point, but I have been working strategy problems at lunch, like I mentioned previously. Right now, I'm on pawn structure problems of which there are almost 200 in the 1800 problem set of Strategy 2.0. Anyway, where I am in this particular part of the problem set is an area that I've really struggled with. This tends to be situations where there are wing attacks on both sides of the board. My tendency is to overplay the pawn race and push my pawns forward without consideration for my opp's chances on the other side. The problem set shows how GM's respond to the situations by shoring up and stopping counterplay on the opp's side before pushing their pawns through. It's very enlightening.
I even got up from bed last night to go work some more tactics problems. I'm in the Surprise Moves chapter of Reinfeld's book now, which I'm finding to be the most difficult problem set of the lot. I've worked over 800 of the 1001 problems at this point and have done 7 mini-circles on 756 of them. I know I need to work on strategy (which I still do at lunchtime), but I've got to get past tactics first. It just won't make sense to drill on strategy until I get tactics mastered. That would be like spending a lot of effort determining what needs to be done before knowing how to do it. I need to know how to do it, first.
Kind of off point, but I have been working strategy problems at lunch, like I mentioned previously. Right now, I'm on pawn structure problems of which there are almost 200 in the 1800 problem set of Strategy 2.0. Anyway, where I am in this particular part of the problem set is an area that I've really struggled with. This tends to be situations where there are wing attacks on both sides of the board. My tendency is to overplay the pawn race and push my pawns forward without consideration for my opp's chances on the other side. The problem set shows how GM's respond to the situations by shoring up and stopping counterplay on the opp's side before pushing their pawns through. It's very enlightening.
posted by CelticDeath at 1:05 PM
4 Comments:
I always play the Morra gambit against the Sicilian. Maybe because I'm too lazy to learn all those variations.. I only know the names :) According to Scid, I have a 58% score as white (I never play the sicilian with black) so I guess for class level players, this is a good gambit. Plenty of trick in there. Unfortunately, not only for white, as I found out lately :( There is a nasty checkmating trick for black, when he places his knight on g4 treatening to mate with his queen on h2, and then plays Nd4, attacking both the knight on f3 and the queen that is usually placed on e2. So watch out for it, I've been burned, not once! :)
I think SMG is excellent below Expert level. I've scored rather well with it against Sicilian. What I like about it is not the possible quick mate but the fact that all white pieces have a logical place:
+ Queen to e2
+ Light squared bishop to c4-b3
+ Dark squared bishop f4 or e3 (if e3 knight could be posted to c7!)
+ Rooks to c1 and d1
If black plays carefully he's a pawn up but there are many ways he could go wrong. I've found it best to go through carefully all my SMG games, when the pieces are developed fast there are many tactical possibilities that a computer will show instantly. This way I'll know the right plan in the next time.
Some links (you're probably read them already..) :
A SGM System against Sicilian
SGM at Chessville
Fraktal already warned about the Siberian variation. I've tried to find the perfect solution to this and so far the best response is to play Bf4 as early as possible (i.e. in e6 -lines to play Bf4 before Bc4).
I also have few of my own SGM games annotated here (STC Open games 6 & 8, T26 game 3)
Regards,
- bahus
I play the sicilian and head for the siberian, its the recommendation of the book I use for my black repertoire (Meeting 1 e4). These are fun to play for both sides if you enjoy tactical battles!
Thanks, everybody. I had some info on the Siberian variation, but I think I need to commit that line to memory. Bahus, thank you for the games. I will definitely look at them. You're a stronger player than I am, so I'm sure you played those games better than I would have and I can only benefit by studying them.
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