| Mar-17-16 | | Marmot PFL: A typical Benko Gambit type ending, where white has the extra pawn but black has all the initiative. |
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| Mar-17-16 | | RookFile: Topalov did well to hold this. |
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| Mar-17-16 | | Ulhumbrus: 3 h4? is an absurd opening but it is up to Black to find a good answer and Topalov may have had reason to believe that it was not very easy for Black to find the right choices. 3...c5! transposes into a Benko gambit in which because of White's loss of time Black has the advantages of a Reti opening. 7...0-0? seems inexact because after 7...Bxa6 as in the normal Benko gambit 8 e4 can be answered by 8...Bxf1. Ater this despite the exchange of queens Black's queen side attack persists and he even regains the pawn with advantage, as Pal Benko has indicated in his book on the Benko ganbit. |
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| Mar-18-16 | | activechess55: Giri's transposition looks a great idea. I could not help recalling that, in Anand-Gelfand match, in third game Anand with white played 1 d4 nf6 2 c4 g6 3 f3. Here, Gelfand could not equalise properly and Anand developed big initiative. In another game of the same ch. same idea was repeated and Anand got big initiative once again. Curiously, it was Anand,who did not repeat neo-grunfield thereafter. Gelfand could have transposed to benko gambit by playing 3... c5 4 d5 b5 etc. Or am I wrong ? |
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| Mar-18-16 | | saintdufus: It seems to me this game has been mis-classified: it is clearly a Benko Gambit (albeit with the unusual move h2-h4 thrown in). The move 3.h4!? may seem absurd, but it's a thematic attacking maneuver in openings where Black fianchettos the king's bishop. Before this game, the move 3.h4 was played by several GMs, including heavy-hitters like Richard Rapport (2674) and Ivan Ivanisevic (2645). The move's #1 proponent by far, though, is the popular English grandmaster Simon "Harry the h-pawn!" Williams. |
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| Mar-19-16 | | RookFile: Well, it's basically a Benko gambit. One of the main lines has white answering ...Bxf1 with Kxf1. Later, he plays h3, Kg1, and Kh2 to get the h1 rook out. The point of all this is, a move by the h or g pawn is usually necessary anyway for white, so if he can provoke black into ...h5 the end result is actually that white gains a tempo compared to the usual setup. That's the good news. The bad news is h3 at some point is probably preferable to h4, because it's useful to take away ....Ng4 and ...Ne5. |
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| Mar-19-16 | | saintdufus: Hi RookFile, good points. The main threat behind h2-h4 is the further advance of the pawn to h5, where it creates a "pawn lever" against g5 (the point being to open the h-file for attack). I believe you allude to this maneuver when you refer to Black being "provoked" into playing ...h5 (i.e. to prevent White's h4-h5 expansion). Note that as long as the knight remains on f6, Black has the h5-square amply guarded; but when Giri wanted to relocate that knight to g4, he had to first play the prophylactic move 13...h5, in order to prevent the h-pawn's advance. The tempo he spent to do this offset the tempo Topalov used on his third move. |
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Mar-19-16
 | | An Englishman: Good Evening: Definitely a Benko Gambit by transposition and not an "Indian Game: West Indian Defense." 3...c5 looks like an instant equalizer. Later on after the Queens came off: did White have a significantly worse position a pawn up, a slightly worse position with equal material, equality with a pawn deficit, and a forced draw a Knight down? |
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Apr-01-25
 | | FSR: <An Englishman> "West Indian Defense" and "Old Sicilian" seem to be Chessgames' favorite descriptors. I have no idea what either of those openings is. |
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Apr-01-25
 | | Retireborn: <FSR> "West Indian" was (as far as I know) coined by Tartakower in his book of selected games, to describe QP openings where Black plays ...b6. Evidently it means something different to CG. I'd call this game a King's Indian or a Benko Gambit, but in general I find quibbling over the names of openings rather pointless. |
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Kibitzing
