Wednesday 16 December 2015

Lost on move 6!

Another salutary lesson about the perils of non-engine Correspondence Chess.
As one of my reasons for playing CC is to work on my openings, I am using the Leningrad Dutch against 1.d4 in a number of games. Clearly my opponent was up for some fun, as on move 4 he threw his h pawn up the board. Now this is certainly dangerous for Black, but most of my references seemed to indicate that it isn't impossible to meet (otherwise huge chunks of the Dutch would be out of commission). I also checked the line in HugeBase and found there was one line that looked good for Black.
So on move 6 I played the recommended e6, which had been used by Movsziszian among others, and seemed to be OK for Black. In fact I only lasted another 8 moves, as the roof fell in after 12.Be7+ and 13.O-O-O
After I resigned the game I fired up Stockfish, only to discover that 6. ... e6 was in fact a blunder and White is winning from this point onwards. While I thought I was OK up until move 11 (Be7+ was the first new move in the database), my opponent saw a lot further than me.
Of course one take away from this game is that this might be a useful variation to try if you have the White pieces against the Leningrad Dutch, as the trap takes a little while to spring, and there may be plenty of Black players waiting to fall into it.


Gibbons,Andrew - Press,Shaun [A85]
Aus v Wales, 13.10.2015


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