In this post I am going to give an example of the Four Pawns Attack. The Four Pawns Attack starts with the moves 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.c4 Nb6 5.f4 and the main line continues with 5...dxe5 6.fxe5 Nc6. However I'll not start with the main line. An interesting sideline is 5...g6, of which an interesting opening analysis can be found at Jeremy Silman's site.
The example game below continues with 5...Bf5 of which one of the most interesting variations is named after Viktor Korchnoi: the Korchnoi Variation.
Korchnoi is my personal favorite player ... i was a young teen and trying to become a good chess player when he was first playing Karpov for the World Championship ... this was the very closest of the two matches and i lived and died with each match, going to the local public library every day since there was no coverage in the local papers where i lived and had to track down the New York Times for the moves and even analysis ... i dutifully copied down the moves and even the analysis since xerox copies were too expensive for me certainly ... i was a regular at the library since i was a kid, my parents did one great thing in my life and made me into a reader ... the librarians would surely be shaking their heads watching me hunched over the notebook i bought esp for that championship match ... asking them to resharpen my pencil occasionally ... they asked me who won, who was winning, who i was rooting for, etc ... i of course gave them far more info than they could ever have wanted but what the heck ... to me it was a USA v. USSR match like Fischer's since Korchnoi was a defector ... it mattered not that he didn't defect to the usa, he wasn't a ruskie so it was close enough for me ...
he always looked as if he might literally explode during play, that great vein bulging on his forehead, hunched forward, you could smell the gears heating and turning as they worked in his amazing brain ... and that calm, emotionless Karpov, the true ruskie stereotype ... of course these nationalistic breedings have long since passed but it was the early 70s when when the major sporting events between the us/ussr were being waged and this event fell into those categories as well
as mentioned i have come around to a more sensible look at the world and karpov has become one of my very favorite players as well and i've been studying his games fervently over the past several years ...what a genius really ... korchnoi still remains my all time favorite tho and he just keeps reinforcing my love of his play as he keeps playing regularly on the tournament into his 80s (!!!) ... i hope if i make it to my 80s i can remember the basic openings i've been studying all my life ... what a great player ...
thanks for sharing this opening variation btw ... despite all my words of love for the great korchnoi i'd never heard of this variation bearing his name (in knew of the Caro-Kann variation with his name) and it's even more surprising since my favorite black defense is the King's Indian Defense and of that i love to play against the four pawns ... what an exciting and thrilling opening ... four pawns charging down the field like offensive linemen on the loose ... just so exciting to me ... so glad i found this one and will add it to my notebooks on the KID
i hope you return to the blog and add some more entries ... from what little i've seen, it looks very good :) and thanks again for sharing this special one
Korchnoi is my personal favorite player ... i was a young teen and trying to become a good chess player when he was first playing Karpov for the World Championship ... this was the very closest of the two matches and i lived and died with each match, going to the local public library every day since there was no coverage in the local papers where i lived and had to track down the New York Times for the moves and even analysis ... i dutifully copied down the moves and even the analysis since xerox copies were too expensive for me certainly ... i was a regular at the library since i was a kid, my parents did one great thing in my life and made me into a reader ... the librarians would surely be shaking their heads watching me hunched over the notebook i bought esp for that championship match ... asking them to resharpen my pencil occasionally ... they asked me who won, who was winning, who i was rooting for, etc ... i of course gave them far more info than they could ever have wanted but what the heck ... to me it was a USA v. USSR match like Fischer's since Korchnoi was a defector ... it mattered not that he didn't defect to the usa, he wasn't a ruskie so it was close enough for me ...
ReplyDeletehe always looked as if he might literally explode during play, that great vein bulging on his forehead, hunched forward, you could smell the gears heating and turning as they worked in his amazing brain ... and that calm, emotionless Karpov, the true ruskie stereotype ... of course these nationalistic breedings have long since passed but it was the early 70s when when the major sporting events between the us/ussr were being waged and this event fell into those categories as well
as mentioned i have come around to a more sensible look at the world and karpov has become one of my very favorite players as well and i've been studying his games fervently over the past several years ...what a genius really ... korchnoi still remains my all time favorite tho and he just keeps reinforcing my love of his play as he keeps playing regularly on the tournament into his 80s (!!!) ... i hope if i make it to my 80s i can remember the basic openings i've been studying all my life ... what a great player ...
thanks for sharing this opening variation btw ... despite all my words of love for the great korchnoi i'd never heard of this variation bearing his name (in knew of the Caro-Kann variation with his name) and it's even more surprising since my favorite black defense is the King's Indian Defense and of that i love to play against the four pawns ... what an exciting and thrilling opening ... four pawns charging down the field like offensive linemen on the loose ... just so exciting to me ... so glad i found this one and will add it to my notebooks on the KID
i hope you return to the blog and add some more entries ... from what little i've seen, it looks very good :) and thanks again for sharing this special one