Test your chess: daily chess puzzle

The Silent Sicilian

Black has just played 1…Qb4; what is his threat?

Judith v allanbeard, Playchess 3-0, 1/5/15

Solution

I am a big fan of Andrew Martin’s YouTube videos, which I learn about from following Andrew on Twiter @AMartinChess. I don’t watch them all, time is too short, but those that I do, I always find interesting. Andrew has a great presentation style, too.

One I did catch was an opening I had never heard of, a move I had never contemplated, which he has christened the Silent Sicilian, namely 6…h6 rather than entering the Sveshnikov.

He rightly says it is only for ssurprise, not a main defence, but something about it appealed to me. Yes, if white knows what he is doing black faces the worse of equality, but in the forty 3min blitz games I have played with it since watching the video in mid April, I have a good plus score:

Most people play 7 Nd6+ Bd6[] 8 Qd6 Qe7 and then the queens come off, but in today’s problem game white played 9 Qc7, resulting after a few normal moves in the game position. Black threatens Ne4 because of the pin, and in the game white castled, maybe planning Nd5 if I captured the e4 pawn, but (1 0-0) 1…Ne8! traps the queen.

White loses a piece.

—

Back to the statistics: despite winning a piece as above, I lost the game; that’s blitz; but a few days later I played Judith again, when she exchanged queens, and beat her. So honours even.

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