Bronstein vs Spassky, 1961

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Is unworthy of this comment..

<One of the deepest sacrifices this side of The Evergreen Game -- Soltis>

If you think about it it's an obvious looking move and one of the 1st you'd consider. Any decent player who plays tactically would see it and go for it. At worst you end up with these positions, blacks king is exposed but checking with the engine both these positions are dead equal..

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You cannot rely on engines in this kind of position, whereas you seem to have trusted them blindly. So blindly as to have not evengiven or explained any variations at all. So I'll do your work for you here.

First of all, Black is in very deep trouble early in this game. Look at the position after 13. Bc2, where all of White's pieces seem to be focused on the Black King, and none of Black's pieces seem to be defending it.

Usually in this kind of opening, Black uses the extra f pawn as a buffer for his own King, but Black took it out of position with 11...fxe3. This makes the position much more tactical and acute. It doesn't matter what the eval says. Black is skating on eggshells and can go wrong very easily.

The whole point of Nd6 is to expose the (obvious) Qh7+ attack, and also attack the always-weak f7 (less obvious). It's a good move, just not as deep or subtle as Soltis suggests. The question is does it win by force, or does Black go wrong later?

It looks like Black goes wrong later (he's skating on eggshells, remember?). Nf8 guards against the obvious Qh7+ threat, but how serious is that really? As a rule of thumb, Q-R7ch is almost always good. But not always. In this case Bronstein didn't look deeply enough to see if he could survive the hit.

What about 15...exf1+ 16. Rxf1. Get that out of the way first.

Then 16...Bxd6 to stop Nxf7 and open up an escape square.

17. Qh7+ Kf8 18. Qh8+ Ke7, and the King squirts out. That's the kind of thing that always happens when I try this kind of attack.

The position in the movie after 21.Bb3

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The computer gives 1) =0.00 (23 ply) 21...Qc5+ 22.Kh1 Rxe5 23.Nxe5+ Kh8 24.Nf7+ Kh7 [...]
While in the actual game black is lost.

Since I'm at my most pedantic, I should ad that Kronsteen works for SPECTRE so actually SMERSH has nothing to do with this game.

Although Soltis's name ends in an <s> he is in fact a single individual human male.

But still I do prefer Soltis' name above Soltis's name. Seems confusing.

<When the possessor is a regular singular noun> edit: that does not end in "s" (consequence).

<When the possessor is a singular noun that ends in "s">

<When the possessor is a plural noun that does not end in "s">

BTW, I am a fan of the conductor <Sir Georg Solti>. His family definitely were the Soltis.

LOL! I'm exactly the same way. Like pointing out why the wings on Tom Cruse's F-14 in "Top Gun" were in the wrong place as he's trying to dogfight an A4 and how the song "You are the wind beneath my wings" is inaccurate because it is the wind <above> the wings that creates lift and allows the plane to fly.

I read some time ago that the technical advisor of "Top Gun" was asked how he could have allowed so many technical errors in the movie. His response was something like "Listen, after the movie was done I was just glad that they didn't make it into a musical."

Being a car buff my wife and I recently went to see "Ford vs. Ferrari" although my wife was reluctant to go with me because I'm very familiar with the racing during that period and she thought that I would be upset at all the technical flaws. Afterwards she asked me how many I had spotted and I said "I lost count after about 10."

Victory!