Saturday, November 17, 2007

Room For Improvement - A Recent Loss in the King's Indian

Here's a game I recently played at my club. If you click on "Move List" at the bottom right of the board, you can see all of Fritz's analysis and variations.

This game was against a guy in the 1900's that was doing a simul. It started out as an English but turned into a King's Indian. While Fritz says I was down a pawn or so in the middlge game, I think I did more or less OK. I actually had an even position on move 20, but from there it went downhill, culminating in a colossal mistake with 29... Rxf3, which Fritz says puts me at a four pawn disadvantage. Stupid greedy me just sees a pawn for the taking. I didn't consider that by not putting pressure on his bishop, his knight could neglect its defending duties and create some havoc around my king. And then, of course, another stupid mistake with 32... Nfxe4, allowing a mate in one. What can I say... lots of room for improvement.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being a KID player myself, I looked at your game with interest.

Some (patzer) points:
- It is generally not white's intention to swap his dark squared bishop with black's Nf6 knight. The seeming control of the light central squares by the Nf6 knight is quite artificial, as you'll see this does not really prevent white from pushing his pawns central up. The Bg5 intention is usually to provoke kingside weakness with a hasty h7-h6 push and/or to get the queen behind the bishop in the c1-h6 diagonal, so a fairly thematic Bh6 can be played to swap off the dark squared bishops. Note that white would typically only swap dark squared bishops early if he's intending a quick kingside assault as his bishop is considered good while black's is bad in typical KID setups.
- I agree with Fritz's assessment that white was better in the middlegame. Black did not achieve the thematic kingside break, and the queenside exchanges only resulted to the opening up of the position with white having the bishop pair. Bishops are usually superior to knights in open positions, and white's bishops dominated proceedings while black's "bad" dark squared bishop was some sort of disinterested onlooker.

Chessaholic said...

Chesstyro:
Thanks for the great feedback. I see your point on the Nf6. I think it's another example of overapplying a principle I once read (i.e. protecting the h1-a8 diagonal in this setup). So do you think instead of 5...Nbd7, 5...Nc6 is better? I still think white's pawn moves in the center are not ideal in this game(particularly 9.d5, which Fritz says worsens white's position by a half a pawn). With better play I should have taken advantage of that.

As far as my kingside break - yeah, I'm not sure what I was thinking my queenside forrays would do. Like you said, my dark squared bishop did not do anything at all during the entire game.

BTW, I added your blog to my sidebar.

Anonymous said...

Nc6 is the better move (or at least the more active) in the Classical KID, but since white fianchettoed, I think Nbd7 okay.

Yes, 9. d5 looks bad because of 9...e4, which is another thematic move in the KID. Here, you try to strongpoint the e4 pawn with supports in Nc5 and Bf5 (and note how powerful your Bg7 looks).

But you didn't really do this in the game, so white's play looks justified.

Chessaholic said...

Thanks, appreciate your thoughts! I'll keep them in mind for my next KID.