Examine all biffs #chess #Tromsø 2014

Today is round 4 of the Tromso Olympiad, and this posting is being made mid round. The game of the daywill doubtless be Carlsen's graceful demolition (the game has just finished – he makes the difficult look so easy, in hindsight all his moves are logical, but predicting them is impossible) but Vladimir Kramnik's gam vs Wang Yue had an interesting moment.

Examine all biffs

Vlad has clearly read CJS Purdy since here, rather than playing the move my engine recommends, 1 b5, with a good sized advantage, he played 1 Nf7!?.

I didn't get the point of it when the move was played. It took me a while to appreciate it: 1…Kf7 2 c5 forces black's queen to lose protection of his Nc7, so after say 2…Qb5, 3 Qf4+ is a fork, and the LPDO Knight drops off.

Vlad's concept is deeper than that. Wang played 1…Nf6 2 Qf4 Rd4 when 3 c5! is similar.

The game is ongoing (3…Rf4 4 cb Nb5 5 Nd6 Nd6 6 gf Nb5 7 Bb2 Nd7 8 Rfe1 Nb6 9 Bh3 is the position as I blog, with both players running short of time. If the Playchess clocks are to be believed, Vlad has 15 minutes and Wang 7 minutes, both with 30 second increments, to reach move forty. To me, the position is unclear, but the point of this blog is to give yet another example of the role or examine all biffs.

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