facing unusual openings

Hallo,

recently I encountered a style of playing that I wouldn't think to have any hopes of success. However the player has used it rather well over many games, apparently (he is around 1600 and has many such games won).

Albeit neglecting some golden rules of opening theory (e.g. develop your pieces, dont make only pawn moves), I felt that I didnt exploit it well enough and was soon facing a wall of pawns and defending pieces. Eventually the wall broke, but how would you cope with it?

edit: fixed

Hi

Just post the game number.

One of the lads will post the game.

I'd hang around and do it myself but have to go out and do
some boring non chess stuff.

Hey, thank you. Game ID is 8078365.

edit: apparently the comments I inserted messed it up...

develop, develop, develop. the main response to unorthodox opening moves. the weight of superior activity will build up, and suddenly all kinds of possibilities emerge.

usually it's waste of precious clock to look for an 'instant crusher' against unorthodox opening moves.

Looks to me that Black played correctly- maybe playing e6 before deciding the fate of your Bishop was a ?. Why not play e5 or Bg4 and then e6?

In the middle game it seems like you target the b pawn as a potential weakness but dont follow up with Rb8 or similar trying to crash through. Even with a space advantage you need to create weaknesses or else squeeze so tight that your opponent loses coordination of his pieces.

I didnt understand Bd7-Bc6- perhaps easier was to just play h6 to keep the knight out of g5.

In general it seems you played this position well enough- I wouldn't get too worried when facing odd ball stuff as long as you keep your pawns supported and your pieces in harmony you shouldnt have too many problems to solve.

Game 8078365

just put the game id inside of 'gid' tags. a gid tag starts with 'gid' in square brackets [] and ends with /gid in square brackets.
{gid}8078365{/gid}

if the above brackets were square [] brackets instead of curly {} brackets it would be right

oh never mind, I see you've gone to the full PGN with notation kung-fu.

look to me that he's a passive player waiting for his opponent to make a mistake. He gets a relatively defensible position and hops his knight around.

Originally posted by nimzo5
Looks to me that Black played correctly- maybe playing e6 before deciding the fate of your Bishop was a ?. Why not play e5 or Bg4 and then e6?

In the middle game it seems like you target the b pawn as a potential weakness but dont follow up with Rb8 or similar trying to crash through. Even with a space advantage you need to create weaknesses or else squeez p your pawns supported and your pieces in harmony you shouldnt have too many problems to solve.

Hallo,

thanks for these comments, you picked up two of my unsure moves (see below, bishop and rook).

I see the weakness in 6... e6 now that you write and only felt uncomfortable with 6... e5, because of my pawn structure after 7. d4 or 7. e4. The bishop to 6... g4 I don't see fit, because it forces him to develop his bishop or just another pawn.

For the middle game, I am often at a loss with long term tactics. 12... Rc8 was such a move, which I regretted later, because at first I target the c-pawn, which was already done with 13. c4.

17... Bd7-Bc6 was trying to achieve all at once. Since the knight already had visited g5, I was happy to not play h6... somehow I thought of putting the rook there, in case he would ever rochade and I can attack the already weak pawns.

But mostly I was also annoyed because of my space. My knight on f7 blocked my pawn and there was no real place to put him elsewhere. By that time I was determined to go for the b-pawn weakness, with the white bishop to bind a piece, as it happened in 23... Ba4. I didn't want to make that plan too obvious, so I wanted my queen on d7, not e8, because on d7 it looks still along the diagonal at the king-side. I was actually lucky, that it also allowed 24... Qb7, an important move, which I really didn't have planned, but once I saw it, it was winning.


All in all I was intrigued by this game, because I had the feeling in the back of my head, that I should take much more advantage of it. But it is usuallybetter, not to be greedy...

Has someone a similar game to post? A very strange opening, against the 'common rules', that turned out to be surprisingly strong or so?

Just one real quick note...you played 13 a6. you have been attacking theat weak b3 square. In one case with the slightly awkward n-a5. If you are going to make use of that slightly awkard move you probably need to follow up with q-b6-if he exchanges pawns d3 and b3 are horrid weaknesses in addition to the loose bishop on b2.

Personally, I think your 5th, 6th and 7th moves could have been improved on. Instead of 5 e6 I would have played e5. The 6th move d4 led to the position to become semi-open (your center pawns were fixed) and something to generally avoid if you have a lead in development. You lost a tempo by your move order. Let your opponent move pawns - develope your pieces, castle then look for the break. When facing "unconventional" moves do not look for a crusher since it will rearely exist. Look for small advantages (ie. bishop vs. knight advantage or depending on pawn structure knight vs. bishop, double and/or isolate opponents pawns, etc.) Study middle game books. Books that Iread years ago were: Irving Chernev's - "Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played" - an awesome book with a good explainations of many middle/endgame themes. Larry Evans also wrote a book called Modern Chess Brilliances - also a good book.

Looked at it very quickly and e6 was ?! In my opinion, why not e5 , or if you don't like e5, at least play bg4 to get your bishop outside the pawn chain first. After e6 you duplicate his mistake by making several pawn moves of your own. Also don't think about winning the game right away, I don't think it's true that a good player would have won it super quickly, but he would have developed and castled as quickly as possible and he would probably have a ''winning'' advantage at that point. Furthermore, to take advantage of a lack of development, you need to open up the position. Your advantage dwindled away when you made several pawn moves starting with e6 just to close the center. If you closed the center because otherwise it feels uncomfortable, you just found an area of your game you can improve upon 🙂

Hallo,

indeed I see my pawn moves to be a hindrance, which most of you pointed out. It is true, I seem to play closed games more often, because I am afraid of open games possibilities. So much space for the pieces to hop around...

Could someone try to explain to me the option of 5... Bg4? With the answer of 6. Bd2 I feel that we exchange pieces and that is it...or? I dont see the meaning for the long-term...

Hi

You are correct, this lad is playing this opening as White all the time.
The system as White the lad is using is going for this set up.



The plan being to suck Black forward with a premature attack and hit
him with a counter attack.

Black meanwhile plays as per Fred Reinfeld and gets this.



Now I would take either side. I like Black's freedom, I like the stored
energy in White. (though you will never see me with a White position like
the first diagram - Black yes, White never. )

The trouble is the lad is not that sharp at releasing the energy and seems at
a loss what to do if his opponent just hides behinds the centre.
He appeared to be jumping from plan to plan when he should have been
angling for f4 around about move 20.
Good idea or bad idea it's what I would have gone for.

Playing such a White system needs exact play, one slip and it's gone. (as in this game).
The White set up cannot recover and react in time. It cannot create complications.

Here we see both the above diagrams facing each other.

Position after 10 moves.



Game 7543142

thanks for digging out such a game. i wonder if they were aware of what happened or suddenly looked at it...huh, looks funny, no?

and something like 20. f4 would have certainly mixed up the whole thing...