Wednesday, 13 August 2008

Peter Brace

I played Peter Brace for the first time yesterday. It was an okayish game but I was pretty disappointed with myself for never really getting any advantage in it. I was impressed with how Peter managed to usually pick the right move and didn't appear to make any major mistakes. The big mistake was from me when I allowed my knight to run out of escape squares.

I attempted to play the closed Sicilian as white for the second time, but soon forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I decided to give up my fianchettoed bishop to give him doubled pawns. Still not sure whether it was the right thing to do as it left him with the bishop pair and I had weakened pawns on the kingside.

I made a mistake in the position below:

I played b3 without thinking about how it lines up the Queen and a1 rook for a skewer. It's little things like that what I need to consider more, I tend to not think about them, that and making sure my pieces always have adequate escape squares.

The e4 knight was then trapped when attacked by a pawn, and once moved he could execute the skewer.

I played on for a bit since I still had two rooks, but Peter played accurately enough to force the win.

DeanMaddenvPeteBrace.pgn


Before the game, Ian had me, Martin and Bert playing some weird team game where if you take a piece from your opponent, you can give it to your partner for his board. So lots of silly positions arose.

5 comments:

chess addict said...

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Anonymous said...

The Sicilian : I really quite dislike it !

I tried all sorts to avoid playing it ( mainly 2.c3 ) but in the end I just accept it with 2.Nf3 3.d4 4.Nxd4 and go from there.

Sometimes I play Qxd4 as it isn't quite what most (less booked-up ) Sicilian players expect. "Beating the Sicilina3" which I picked up fora lowly EUR 3 second-hand, is realtively straightforward, although heavily variation-based.
Its put me on the right track though, and Sicilians don't bother me so much.

The other alternative is your favourite King's Indian Attack !

In your game, I think I would have played Rfe1 with a3 as the other move.

I think Rfe1 helps you fight for the centre, where White is very weak.

I found this site (http://chess.kearman.com/html/klubeck.html) when I started investigating how to get the best out of correspondence chess.

The 'counting' principles he gives are relatively simple and it does seem to give me a guide as to where to focus, though defintely NOT which move to play !

Keep up the good posts,

ZP

Anonymous said...

That weird chess team game you played is called bughouse.

(btw, i will add a link to your blog at my chessblog (just starting) http://chesstiger.vox.com ; maybe you have some advise on how and what to put on a chessblog?)

Anonymous said...

I moved my chessblog to
HTTP://CHESSTIGER.WORDPRESS.COM
so that it's easier to leave comments.

Hope to see you there!

Anonymous said...

I play Rossolimo/Moscow variation in Sicilian - 1.e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 /
2. ... d6 3.Bb5+ with pretty good results. It keeps the play closed and simple.