Thursday, May 24, 2012

Chess960: Angelic start positions, where is the devil?

Here is an amazing SP. Almost nothing white does causes any stress for black at all. It feels like black is in heaven because no matter what white does, black has got a perfect reply:
SP459: How does white light the fire in this position?

The features that make this SP so "heavenly" to play for black:
  1. After 1.g4 black can play by symmetry with no apparent suffering. The rooks are exchanged off and symmetry continues. When it finally breaks, black seems completely fine.
  2. The queen can develop to f4/f5 and then to a4/a5 without every being attacked or threatened.
  3. White does not have a starting move that comes to anything! a4?! b4?!
  4. White 1. c4 ... g5!
  5. White 1. d4 ... g5!
  6. White 1. e4 ... g5!
  7. White 1. f4 ... g5!
  8. White 1. g5 ... g5!
  9. White 1. Nd3 ... g5! Nc5 (mate #1) Nd6!
  10. As soon as the military knights develop, they simply get in the way of the pawn front line. But if the pawn front line is developed first, black develops more quickly than white can.
  11. Incredibly, all the mating attacks are easily extinguished including Nc3/b5+Qf4 attacking c7 mate#
Heaven for black?

Enjoy 960

PS) Ok have checked it in a bit more detail. This is actually a really slow and creepy SP. The techniques seem to be to advance the kingside pawns threatening to break through on that side. Develop the military knights NOT to c3/d3 but b3/c3 and both sides castle queenside. This gives white the option of d3. Then white slowly starves black of good moves (kind of a very high level zugswang approach) and incrementally improves their own position until black is forced to play a truly weakening move. The slow strangling of black is accelerated if white can threaten to break through the pawns on the kingside as a long term threat as a function of having one extra tempo.

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