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Today, I played a couple of great games against an Italian opponent on chess.com. My new Italian friend played the Ruy Lopez opening in game 1 and it was a tough battle lasting almost 60 moves. However, he ultimately won the rook and pawn endgame. We played a second match with reversed colours and he played the Sicilian Defense. This gave me an opportunity to play one of my favourite openings, the Grand Prix Attack! I’ve had a pretty good luck with the Grand Prix Attack and it helps me simplify the otherwise complicated opening of the Sicilian.

My opponent played really well for much of the game, but came undone with one bad bishop move. When I reflected on this game afterwards, there are a few strategic insights. There is a risk with keeping the king in the centre. Although my opponent’s position was perfectly okay immediately prior to bishop move according to Stockfish, slightly better in fact, the tolerance for error became less and less. What I mean is that anything other than the top one or two engine moves gave a substantial advantage to me. Computers might be able to navigate this, but this becomes increasingly difficult to play as a human. The king becomes an accessible target and checks are forcing moves. Also, keeping the king in the centre creates a risk that the game could progress such that it is no longer possible to safely castle to either side, as was the case in this game. On top of the issue of king safety, it means that the rooks might be difficult to develop.

This doesn’t mean that castling at the first possible instance is good – it sometimes isn’t. However, as a general heuristic, a general strategic notion, getting the king out of the centre when there is a battle in the middle of the board is more likely to be good than bad, especially at the beginner-intemediate level. Interestingly, evidence of the strength of my attack is that at the point my opponent resigned on move 23, all their pieces were forced onto the back rank, and all their remaining pawns still on their starting squares. Although I was only up one pawn of material prior to the final move, the computer evaluation was over +6.

I hope you found this game interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/40003765917

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.03.02"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "yuri91"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B23"]
[WhiteElo "1303"]
[BlackElo "1330"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "16:16:27 PST"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 d6 3. f4 Nc6 4. Bb5 Bd7 5. Bxc6 Bxc6 6. Nf3 e6 7. d4 cxd4 8. Qxd4 Qb6 9. O-O Qxd4+ 10. Nxd4 Ne7 11. Nxc6 Nxc6 12. f5 Nd4 13. Rf2 Be7 14. Be3 Nc6 15. a3 Ne5 16. fxe6 fxe6 17. Nb5 Bd8 18. Rd1 Nc4 19. Nxd6+ Nxd6 20. Rxd6 Ke7 21. Bc5 Rc8 22. b4 Ke8 23. Rxe6+ 1-0