Openings

Playing White against odd Black defences after 1.e4 (2)

A4. Piece attacks vs. Pirc/Modern 1. e4 ...d6/...g6: 1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Be3

The trouble with the Pirc is that Black will just lurk behind his pawns, and your pieces won't find much to attack. I play the Pirc/Modern as Black, and am always more impressed by systems which threaten to open lines with pawn breaks than any of the piece play lines. But that's not to say they aren't all dangerous; the player with a plan will always beat the player without one.

Minor Opening Mistakes

Here's another trawl of typical mistakes, this time from the first 20 moves of each game of the WECU Minor Championship at Exmouth in Easter 1999.

The games are appended with notes mostly from DR: "out of book" is Fritz' comment, and Fritz has also blunderchecked the games. Let’s first have a look at which openings were played:

Five Sicilians from club play

by Bob Martin

Bob sent me these games with his own notes to illustrate both some nice amateur games with the Sicilian Defence, but also to illustrate what sorts of thinking and assessment goes on at club level. Bob is about an {A} player, so if that's where you want to be, this is the level of judgement you should be capable of. Thanks, Bob!
(28) Martin,R [B78]

  1997

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6

  (1) This initiates a dark-square game.

No More Old Stodge!

This club is a GP-free zone

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.d3 d6

[No more Old Stodge!]

Support the campaign for d2-d4

by playing 4. c3, 4. b4 or 3. d4!

The position above is the Giuoco Pianissimo.

 "Giuoco Pianissimo" is an old Italian phrase meaning "very quiet game"; if you can't remember that you might prefer if we just call this line "Old Stodge"...

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