Friday, July 12, 2013

Non-Random Chess960 Trial Game 9: SP864 after 4)...e6

Here is the continuation of a series of trial openings we are playing through for very difficult SPs that black must face. The PGN database for these trials including comments is here.

In this post we are going to take a look at SP864 in more detail considering that black really struggled in our initial Non-Random Trial game 9.

The move history up to this point was:
1. Ng3 Nf6 2. Nf5 Rg8 3. Nf3 Ng6 4. O-O e6

As can be seen, white has already castled and successfully prevented black from doing the same. Black's difficulties will be king safety and how to activate the rooks.

Mark has suggested that 4)...e6 might be a good way to solve many of black's problems. Not only does it push back the knight, it also potentially aids black's development and even possibly enables a square for black's king to temporarily sit. The problem is that the f6 square is weakened when it will come under fire from white's automatically fianchettoed bishop. The theory is that this will undermine black's king safety.

Most of the analysis we will do of this situation will be discussed in the comments to this post.

Initial position SP864: 4) ...e6