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I have been on a bit of a roll lately having had a string of wins! Now, this is mostly just good luck, but with having just entered the 1300s, it’s feeling good. Today at lunch, I had the white pieces and my opponent used the Pirc Defense, which is one of the hypermodern openings. I usually don’t like playing against hypermodern openings as I tend to find them confusing and end up in weird positions! In this game, it ended up being happily smooth as a blunder in opening by my opponent resulted in me being a piece up. Please enjoy!

One of the interesting things I’ve observed is that sometimes, tactical ideas from classical openings simply don’t work in hypermodern systems! My opponent attempted to pin my knight on f3 to my queen, which is not an uncommon idea in the Italian Game or the Vienna Game. In this match, however, attempting to do so was considered a straight up mistake by Stockfish giving a +2 advantage to white! I don’t know enough about chess to really understand why but my hunch is that this attempted pin (which undermines white’s control of the centre) is much less effective when black isn’t directly fighting for control of the centre with their own pawns.

My opponent also had a tendency to trade pieces to reduce the tension, and most of these trades seemed to end up being advantageous to me. Certainly, this might be something to consider when playing the Pirc Defense. Reading about the opening, it seems that the Pirc Defense is a sound setup, but probably not the best opening for beginners. I hope you found this video interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/38717640057

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.02.15"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "layanthony06"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B08"]
[WhiteElo "1328"]
[BlackElo "1431"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "19:14:34 PST"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Be3 Bg4 6. Be2 O-O 7. e5 Bxf3 8. Bxf3 dxe5 9. dxe5 Qxd1+ 10. Rxd1 Nfd7 11. Bxb7 Bxe5 12. Bxa8 c6 13. Rxd7 Nxd7 14. Bxc6 Nb6 15. Bxb6 Rb8 16. Bxa7 Rxb2 17. Nd1 Rxc2 18. Be4 Rxa2 19. Bb6 Ra4 20. Bf3 Rb4 21. Be3 Bd4 22. Bxd4 Rxd4 23. O-O Rd7 24. Nc3 Kg7 25. Rd1 Rxd1+ 26. Bxd1 f6 27. g4 e5 28. h4 Kg8 29. Ne4 Kf7 30. g5 f5 31. Nd6+ Ke7 32. Nc4 e4 33. Kg2 Ke6 34. f3 exf3+ 35. Bxf3 Kf7 36. Bd5+ Kf8 37. Kf3 Ke7 38. Kf4 Ke8 39. Ke5 Ke7 40. Bg8 Kf8 41. Bxh7 Kg7 42. Bxg6 Kxg6 43. Nd6 f4 44. Kxf4 Kh7 45. h5 Kh8 46. Kf5 Kg8 47. Kg6 Kh8 48. h6 Kg8 49. Kh5 Kf8 50. h7 Kg7 51. g6 1-0