Pawns just wanna have fun

I've always enjoyed the lines in the Vienna Defense to the BDG where White flings his kingside pawns up the board, helter-skelter. It exemplifies the sheer madness of the opening. Makes you want to shout to the white king, "get some clothes on, for god's sake!" Here's a recent example.

Swamped in Sweden: The Vienna Defense

Today we have a brutal little BDG played last week at the Deltalift Open in Tylösand, Sweden. I did not know this place, so I looked it up. According to that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia, "Tylösand is famous for its 7 km long sand beach, its golf courses and 'Hotel Tylösand', a hotel owned by Roxette star Per Gessle and Björn Nordstrand. Tylösand earlier mostly consisted of small summer houses but is nowadays considered to be an expensive area, where the rich and famous have built luxury villas..."

I like beaches, have lived alongside a couple of them, one with a lovely view of the South China Sea, and in fact I live across the road from one now. Our beach has more than seven kilometers of bright white sand. Rich and famous and luxury villas, not so much.

Still, the thought of winning a Blackmar-Diemer in such a pleasant setting is, well, heartwarming.

One more Vienna Defense

There’s something distasteful about the Vienna Defense. Not that I’ve got anything against Vienna, or Austria, or even Hans Müller, the guy Diemer always blamed credited with dreaming the defense up. But when somebody offers you a pawn, take it! If you don’t want to play into a Blackmar-Diemer, step up and fight like a man with something like the Lemberger (my personal favorite) or, if the opportunity presents, the Hübsch. But 4...Bf5, that’s just...well, distasteful. (Not to mention that I don’t like to play against it.) And we recently saw where Scheerer had his problems with it as well: Scheerer - Kopylov Revisited.

So I comb through over four thousand games in this week’s TWIC and turn up only one solitary BDG, and what is it? One more Vienna Defense. And a draw at that. It is distasteful.

More old BDG friends

Old photos again... I was rummaging through back issues of BDG WORLD and in Vol III, No 5, Oct-Dec 1985 I came across this photo and caption: 

Bob Fleuriot was in Europe a few months ago,and stopped by to pay his respects to E. J. Diemer, who lives now in the little village of Fussbach in the Black Forest. Bob sent us this photo of himself with EJD. If they’re considering a position on the board, Bob (on the left) would seem to be more content with it.

Bob and I played a few correspondence BDGs. He went way back with the opening. I think he had good nerves. I say that because he was willing to venture a Kampars Gambit against the Vienna Defense. You have to have good nerves for that. After he won it he received a congratulatory letter from Kampars himself (you remember letters—people sent those in the days before email). Here’s that game, presented without notes. My nerves won’t stand for it.

The Vienna Defense Line in Scheerer - Kopylov Revisited

Last week ChessBase celebrated its 25th anniversary by offering a 25% discount on its products for one day. I've used ChessBase from its earliest days, but have been getting by with version 9 for several years. Rather than risk waiting another 25 years for 50% off, I decided to go ahead and pick up version 11.

I'm glad I did.

One nice feature in 11 is something the CB folks call "novelty annotation." In earlier versions, CB would identify a new move, a novelty, in an observed game by checking the game against a reference database installed on your computer's hard drive. Now CB 11 checks a huge online database and inserts the appropriate line(s) in the game on your screen. And it does this very quickly, usually in a matter of seconds.

I tried this feature on the Scheerer-Kopylov game I posted recently, a line in the Vienna Defense that Scheerer had included through White's 19th move in his book. ChessBase came back extending Scheerer's line several moves, and providing a White win which split from Scheerer on move 22.

So here's another look at the Scheerer-Kopylov game with the new line from Leisebein-Jacobs, getting a jump on the attack down the h-file with 22.Rh3.

Scheerer's BDGs Come Up Short

It's refreshing to see an author actually play an opening he writes about--especially when the opening is the Blackmar-Diemer. In the just completed Luebeck club tournament, Christoph Scheerer, author of the recently published the Blackmar-Diemer gambit, a modern guide to a fascinating chess opening, tried for a BDG in two games. In one game Black evaded the BDG by going into a Hübsch Gambit; in the other Black declined with the Vienna Defense.

Unfortunately, White lost both games and finished with 4 points. His opponents, Michael Kopylov and Vladimir Epishin, along with Henrik Danielsen finished on top with 6 of 9, with the title going to Kopylov on tie-breaks. The game with Kopylov, a Vienna Defense, goes 18 moves deep in a line in Scheerer's book.

(Use the pull-down menu to see the second game.)

New Books, Real and Imagined

I've about given up hope for the long promised new book on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit from Everyman Chess. Since I first wrote about it here almost a year and a half ago  it's been delayed again and again. Some time ago I wrote the publishers, asking about the status, but received no reply.

So much for imagined.

Now for the real. Guido De Bouver, from Belgium, has produced Attack with the Blackmar Diemer, A Computer Analysis of the Teichmann, Gunderam, O'Kelly and Vienna lines in the Blackmar Diemer gambit. The book is in English, 160 pages, with figurine algebraic notation.  From the author's description:

This is the first book in a series of volumes on the Blackmar Diemer gambit. Their purpose is to provide in-depth analysis of the various lines. Since Diemer's gambit most often leads to wild open positions, the systematic use of a silicon monster (all analysis in this book was performed using Rybka 3 32-bit using the free Arena GUI) will provide essential insight in the evaluation of the resulting unbalanced positions.

The reader will note that the book does not provide a systematic overview of all white's options. Instead, I choose a number of lines that particularly fit in with Diemer's ideas and that provide complications that will help the gambiteer in the over the board play.

The book is available now from the author, in either a hard copy or a protected PDF version. Details are available at http://www.humbeekseschaakclub.be/overzicht.pdf, where you may view a table of contents, several extracts, and ordering information.

Computer analysis, don't you just love it? More to say on that coming up.

The Blackmar-Diemer in Iran

According to TWIC (what a great resource), "The 18th Fajr International Chess Open Tournament took place February 19th-28th 2010 in Mashhad - Iran. 11 rounds Swiss System 90 minutes for the whole game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move 1."

And what turns up there? An Iranian FM playing (and winning) a BDG. See for yourself:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

Abbasifar, H. 2333 - Marfavi, J. 2100

1-0 (18th Fajr Open) 2/21/2010

[#] 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Bf5 4.f3 Nf6 5.g4 Bg6 6.g5 Nh5 7.fxe4 e5 8.d5 Bb4

[8...h6 9.Nf3 Bb4 10.Qe2 Bxc3+ 11.bxc3 Nf4 12.Qb5+ c6 13.Qxb7 cxd5 14.Bxf4 exf4 15.Qxa8 Bxe4 16.Bb5+ Kf8 17.O-O Qb6+ 18.Kh1 Ke7 19.Bd3 hxg5 20.Bxe4 dxe4 21.Qxe4+ Qe6 22.Qxe6+ fxe6 23.Nxg5 e5 24.Rae1 Nc6 25.Rxf4 Kd6 1-0 Purser,T-Anonymous/Internet Chess Club 1998.]

9.Bg2 O-O 10.Nh3 f5 11.gxf6 Qxf6 12.Bg5 Qb6 13.Qd3 Nd7 14.O-O-O Nf4 15.Nxf4 exf4 16.d6 Nc5? +1.33

[16...Bxc3 17.Qc4+ Kh8 18.Qxc3 cxd6 19.Rhf1 Bh5 -0.60]

17.Qc4+ Bf7 18.Nd5 Qxd6? +2.38

[18...Bxd5 +1.33]

19.e5 Qxe5 20.Bxf4 Qh5 21.Qxb4 Na6 22.Qxb7 Nc5 23.Qc6 Ne6 24.Bg3 Qg5+ 25.Kb1 h5 26.Rhe1 Rae8 27.Re5 Qg4 28.Bf3 Qh3 29.Ne3 Nd4 30.Rxd4 Rxe5 31.Bxe5 Bxa2+ 32.Kxa2 Rxf3 33.Rd8+ [1-0]

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