What Kind of BDG Was That?

Sometimes I enjoy opening a book or magazine article on the Blackmar-Diemer, choosing a diagram of a middlegame position, again at random, and seeing if I can guess what variation it evolved from. Take a look at this diagram, for example.

After 16...Nb4

A routine BDG position, I'd say, and a BDG accepted at that. There's the open f-file, the White queen already at her standard attack position at h4, the bishop at g5, not unusual. The white-squared bishop is at d3, my personal favorite square for that bishop--and look, Black has just played a knight to b4, preparing to take that irritating bishop off the board (just like in Atzerpay's last game). Is there time? 

The White knight on e4 must have come from c3. Come to think of it, it's there on e4 also like in Atzerpay's last game. But what's with e5?There's a pawn there on the preferred position of the other knight. Still, with his bishop on g7, Black must have played the Bogoljubov Defense, or perhaps the Pohlmann.

Let's see. It's a recent game, played just a day or two ago. By a couple of GMs, yet. Oh. Oh, my. Well... it's almost as good as a BDG.

There's just something about f7

The Knight and the f-pawn should be friends.

"I don't know what got into me," the Knight said. "I was just sitting there at e5, hanging out, minding my own business, and then..."
"And then?" The Bishop prompted.
"And then I look up and this little guy on f7 is eyeing me. He just sits there eyeing me, saying nothing, just eyeing me."
"So?"
"So he just kept eyeing me and finally I said 'You looking at me, little man? You looking at me?' and he still didn't say nothing. He just sat there and stared at me with those little round eyes in that little round head and didn't say nothing."
"Pawns are like that sometimes," the Bishop said.
"Yeah, I know," the Knight said. "I know, I know... but then something just snapped, and I ... I just fell on him like a ton of bricks."
"It's over now," said the Bishop, "How do you feel about it now?"
"Terrible. I don't know what got into me. I got nothing against f-pawns. Some of my best friends are f-pawns." The Knight looked away. "You know me. I abhor violence."

Atzerpay Again: No Time

My buddy Peter Atzerpay, the well-known private investigator and strong amateur chessplayer (and a better alter ego than I ever deserved), dropped by the Blackmar Mansion beach shack last weekend, between planes. Thinking we might knock off a game or two, I hauled a couple of Becks out of the cooler, but no.

"Nope. No time," he said. "Consulting on a hot case in DC."

He chugged down his beer, clearly agitated, in a rush. "Gotta run," he said. He grabbed his ragged briefcase off the table. "By the way," he said. "Do you know anything about Twitter?"

And Pete was gone before I could answer. When I picked up the empty Becks I realized it sat on an envelope with the score of a chess game scribbled on its back. The ink was beginning to run from the condensation from the bottle but I was able to make out the moves.

Ignoring the Langeheinecke Pawn

The Langeheinecke Defense to the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is named after a German doctor who lost a 47-move correspondence game to Diemer in 1940. In fact it is not so much a defense to the gambit — if that name is reserved for lines where the gambit is accepted—as it is a declination.

In the line's most direct form, after 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3, Black passes on the gambit pawn with 4...e3. White is not obliged to take the pawn immediately with 5.Bxe3, although he usually does. Scheerer, in his recent book on the BDG, doesn't consider games where White leaves the e-pawn alone for a while. But here are a couple of such games, including one played a couple of weeks ago, in which the passed pawn survives to the bitter end.

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.)

"Don't think this is enough"

Thanks to Matt Lasley for alerting me to this game from the Jan-Mar 2011 issue of The Chess Correspondent, the newsletter of the Correspondence Chess League of America (CCLA).  The game was published as a best game contest winner for the Master-Expert category, and was probably played in 2010. The players' ratings are from the current CCLA rating list. The game slips into a BDG where Black tries a queenside attack beginning with 9...a6. White, a veteran BDG player, has other plans.