Ulhumbrus: 5 Bb5 makes no attempt to play against Black's isolated d pawn by exchanging pawns on d5.
7 Nxc6?! moves the Knight a third time to exchange it for a Knight moved once- making a loss of two tempi- and on top of this it strengthens Black's centre by drawing the b7 pawn on to the c file. Perhaps the idea is to attack Black's centre by c4, but Timman does not advance the c pawn.13 Re1?! concedes the bishop pair. Black pays less for losing time on the capture ....Nxe4, if Black's King has time to reach safety.
16 Bd2 blocks this square for the N. 16 h3 frees the N for Nd2, and White is going to play this move later, but it disturbs the King side pawns without necessity. This suggests an alternative means of freeing White's N. 16 Qh4 defends h2 and frees the N on f3 to go to d2.
20 Nxe5?! gains a Rook and two pawns for two bishops, perhaps not enough. This suggests 20 Bc1.
25 c4 makes a concession: it makes the b pawn backward. However with Black's Q on a6, the threat is 25...Re7.
The move 29 Qc8 suggests the question of who benefits more from an exchange of Queens. If White's main source of counterplay is to be gained from exchanging Rooks and trying to attack Black's King with his Queen and Rook, this suggests that the exchange helps Black.
After 30 Rxc8 the game enters a technical phase and technique is one of Korchnoi's greatest strengths. According to one writer, it was said of Korchnoi that people who gained a positional disadvantage against him usually gave up hope.
36..Re7 begins an attack upon White's King. To try to defend himself, White relinquishes the f pawn by f3.
43 Rxa7 loses a Rook because 43...Bb4 threatens both 44...Bxa7 and the fork 44...Bc5+ On the other hand, if White does nothing his pawns will just fall. Timman's main mistake appears to be the sequence begun by 20 Nxe5. Perhaps there was something which he saw too late.
Kibitzing
sac: 21...Qc8
