Alexander McDonnell vs Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais (1834)

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Alexander McDonnell vs Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais
La Bourdonnais - McDonnell 3rd Casual Match (1834), London ENG, rd 10
King's Gambit: Accepted. Mayet Gambit (C38) · 1-0

ANALYSIS [x]

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Jul-03-03		fred lennox: By move 19 most of the pieces are on the e-h files with the white king badly cornered. White's "useless" rook and Black's king are the only pieces on the a-c files. Alongside the bloodshed the pawns sneak up and siege the Lordship. A great pawn storm, almost comical, definitly brilliant.

Jul-04-03		drukenknight: the pawn storm makes no sense because white does not do the natural thing and simply exchange. But black is worse because he simply allows himself to be exchanged, so his game is falling apart faster. Go to black's 19. A better move might be 19...Ng4 in order to put pressure on the K. ....Qh4 might be next. But even if white exchanges N. hxg4 will reconnect pawns and black will be ahead in material (not mention the h file is open and there is a pin). So that would okay for black. 21....Bxf3+ is insane because black is behind, he should not exchange. 23...Bh6 same thing. He is running out of good moves because he started to exchange and is now on a deadly downhill cycle. These guys were actually good tactical players, the other game you posted was excellent. Theory was not well known back then.

Jul-07-03		fred lennox: Fisher played as if theory almost didn't exist, relying almost exclusively on calculating variations and he wasn't bad. What theory do you speak of? Throughout the last century theory has become more and more contradictoy and computors has made it more so. Computors do not know theory and has beaten Kasporov. Someone can know a lot more theory than Capablanca and be no match for him. You want to know how to really improve your chess? Take your last 20 annotated games and go over them with someone who has a 3-400 higher rating. He'll point out flaws in your thinking and you'll improve a lot quicker that way than reading a bunch of books however excellent. They talked a lot about chess in those days and did post-mortems. Books are written for profit and there was no profit in writing of chess then. That doesn't mean they didn't know theory. A story of Lasker visiting a chess club introduced himself and asked to play the strongest player. Lasker quick to note he wasn't so strong played...Qe3 expecting fxe3. The player didn't. Lasker asked "Why didn't you take my queen", "What! and have double pawns in front of my king??" Practicing calculation is the best way to improve your intuition and positional flair. To take one of your lines in this great attack counter-attack game 18...Ng4, he does this with better timing latter. 19 Nf5 gives black problems.

Jul-07-03		drunknight II: you should look to exchange when ahead in material and look to attack the K when behind. That is all. Of course the game is not so simple that every exchange will be good or that every check will be good, there is some subtlety to it. I just have no idea why black would want to exchange here. You know you would think that thinking deeply would help you but sometimes I wonder. Korchnoi is a good example, did you see the game w/ Akopian we were looking at the other day? All the passed pawns at the end, must have caused some very deep calculations and yet at the end it looks that both sides were making mistakes. Korch. allowed another passed pawn when behind in material and akopian failed to break a pin. sometimes I wonder if all the calculations is worth it.

Jul-09-03		fred lennox: Never mine my last comment. I guess I don't see where black is behind. What I do see is a sort of hare and tortoise race between the wings. The only way the latter is going to win is by obstruction. Even so, it is not easy.

Jul-11-03		drukenknight: Fred I am counting connected pawns as 1, isolated and doubled pawns as 0. This may shed some light on this. Even if you disagree w/ this assignment of numbers, what value to you replace them with?

Sep-24-04		Knight13: I've learned this kind of attack on the Castle King with pawns. 25... b6 might helped. 26. axb6 cxb6 would leave white's king more spaces to escape. No wonder 25... Nxf5?! 26. exf5 Qd3 27. a6 b6 would help solve the problem, too. But 27. d5? that's a wasted move. 28. c4! black's got no way out. 29. axb7 Kb8... I don't know why black didn't take the b7 pawn. I need time to study this.

Feb-03-12		Knight13: 16...h5 is too slow and takes away the h5 square from the Black knight, blocking its most comfortable entrance into the attack. 16...Bf8 is more efficient.

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