May-04-11
 | | FSR: What opening should an ordinary 2400 play against Spassky? I don't know, but not the King's Indian. The Petroff seems like a reasonable choice. Spassky played 5.Qe2 a lot (invariably drawing), although I assume he would have chosen something different here. |
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| May-04-11 | | Dr. Siggy: Surely, when he played 2. h4, Spassky remembered Spassky vs Ufimtsev, 1958; |
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May-04-11
| | FSR: No doubt. I thought of that game too. It's in Soltis' book on Spassky. I was surprised to see the game transpose into a Saemisch King's Indian from that. |
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Nov-11-11
 | | Phony Benoni: Just to give the setting: Gonzalez was actually leading the tournament at this point with a score of 6-0, having defeated players like Benko, Rohde, and Fedorowicz. However, he had a daunting task ahead of him, as the players with 5 1/2 included Spassky, Christiansen, Dmitry Gurevich, Chernin, Tseshkovsky, Reshevsky, and Joel Benjamin. 2.h4 probably put him in his place immediately, and he lost three games in a row. |
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| Jan-30-13 | | King Crusher: 2..h5 is needless as black has not castled. Simply 2..Bg7 followed by..c5 must be right. The game transposed into a variation the King's Indian;Samiesch that Spassky often played.
Black's minor pieces found no activity throughout the game. |
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| Jan-30-13 | | Shams: <King Crusher> I'm new to these lines so as for <2.h4> I make no comment. But with 2.d4 Bg7 inserted, as it commonly is, Tiger recommends 3.h4 d5! 4.e5 (4.ed Qxd5 5.Be3 Nf6 "and the meaning of h2-h4 is lost on me" -THP) ...h5! and Black should be fine as long as e5-e6 is kept under control. He quotes this game approvingly, and I agree that it looks convincing: Granda-Zuniga vs A Kakageldyev, 1996 Tiger's Modern pp.187-188 |
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| Jan-30-13 | | Shams: One more comment, somewhat obvious-- I note that Ufimtsev chose the 1...d6/2...Bg7 move order in the game <Dr. Siggy> links to below. Obviously Black doesn't want to move his d-pawn twice in the first three moves, so if he's worried about this line with the h-pawn, 1...Bg7 first looks like a better move order. |
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Apr-07-15
 | | perfidious: <FSR: What opening should an ordinary 2400 play against Spassky? I don't know, but not the King's Indian....> Given Spassky's record against the KID with his vaunted Saemisch, of which I am sure Gonzalez was well aware, maybe you are right about that, but the King's Indian is something with which he was comfortable. Less than three months after this game, I played a three-way blitz match with Miles Ardaman and Gonzalez for fivers, racking up a large plus against Jorge. Every game he played Black against me was a Saemisch KID. |
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Apr-09-15
| | FSR: <perfidious> OTOH, Yermolinsky advises players to play the openings they know, even against stronger opponents, rather than playing solid openings that they know little about. Probably Gonzalez knew next to nothing about the Petroff and decided to stick to something he knew instead. A reasonable choice, even if it worked out badly here. |
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Kibitzing
