Tuesday, March 2, 2010

New Video: Drake Chess Festival vs. Bernat

Here is a new video everyone! I scored 3.0/4.0 in the Open of the Drake Chess Festival, increasing my USCF to 1935, the highest it has been in nearly 2 years. I made a video of my last round game, which was the best played of the four. I also fiddled with the video settings some more to try and get more of a square look to the board. As always, I welcome any comments here or on the forum.

1 comment:

Jason said...

Nice game. I like how the pieces support each other for a sort of unusual mating pattern in the end.

I did a quick database search and noticed that Kasparov himself did the c3 approach when faced with the Hyper-accelerated Dragon (2...g6), although the only time he faced it was an online blitz game that somehow still made it into my database. As for 5...d5, I guess the reasoning is just that Black has to get some sort of central influence. Strangely enough, Black scores 55% after 6...Bg4, but possibly those stats are skewed because some people only play this opening against weaker players as a way to avoid some drawish anti-sicilians like 2...d6 3.Bb5+. Trying to look at something this ugly in the most positive way possible, it's kind of like a French, except Black put his dark bishop on the wrong spot and traded c5 for d4 too early, but at least he's got the light bishop out!

I like how your game illustrates how effective a c3 approach can be when Black plays that move order. (It wouldn't work as well after 2...d6 because there's Nf6.) Another interesting way to play against this opening is 2...g6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4!?, taking advantage of the open diagonal, i.e. 4...Nf6 5.Nc3 (or 5.e5!?) 5...Nc6 6.Qa4 d6 7.e5!.

Like Jeremy's Chess Adventures on facebook!

Custom Search