More mutterings about the h pawn: Topalov-Nakamura

I should stop looking out for moves by the h pawn, but it has happened again, in today's game Topalov-Nakamura.

This was the position where Veselin advanced his h pawn. The move surprised me, but less so than in the games in my previous post, since I regarded it as either prophylaxis, discouraging Ng6, which would be met by g3; also noting that black can't possibly exploit the 'weakening' of g4, because of the position of his knights; and possibly, but least likely, I thought, to advance and weaken the king side.

Helped by usage of the a file, in a similar way to Mickey Adam's beautiful Ruy Lopez yesterday versus Peter Svidler, the h pawn has advanced, and starts to cramp black.

Here, it is now provoking weaknesses. The game is not over yet, and the present position, as I post this blog, is shown below. The h pawn has ruined black's king side structure, and I suspect in Hikaru's time pressure ( he had about 1 minute for his last half dozen moves, to Veselin's 10 minutes, I suspect his …b3 was a losing move ( in a very tough position).

We shall see, and engines will reveal all, but my expectation is that today there will be a fine victory by Veselin: a player whose play I really admire, and who I regret we don't see more of.

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