Annotated chess game

Beginning as a Petroff, the game transformed itself into a Four Knights and then a Giuoco Piano. Such is the flexibility of transposition. Good here instead was the opening 'fork trick' which goes 4...Nxe4 5.Nxe4 d5 6.Bd3 dxe4 or eben 6...f5! Black gets quite a good game out of it.

6.Bxf7ch was the sort of thing I played by choice for a year or two after learning the game. I liked the asymmetry. But it meant a nominally even exchange, for which I gave up two active and handy pieces to obtain a pawn and, so early in the game, not a very useful rook. It is a losing proposition - that is to say, one loses more than gains with such a move. Castling was correct.

The 'fork trick' going the other way! Neat.

This looks like a terrible mistake. White could now play a devastating shot: 11.Nf6ch!

Wow! You're right. I totally missed that!

Compare the pawn structures! But I don't think I would have played this pawn thrust - not yet anyhow - for two reasons. One is that 12...f4 leaves the e-pawn 'backward'. It won't be easy to advance it, from here on. Further, e4 has been left open as a fine outpost square for the White knight. I think I would have preferred 12...Be6 with the idea of bringing one or both rooks onto the d-file.

Not altogether useless, I think. It prevents 15.d4, with which White might have sorted out his pawns.

Maybe Rf8-f5...h5...h6...g6(ch)? With the idea 19.Kh1 Bg2ch 20.Kg1 Bxf3ch 21.Kf1 Bxd1. Seems a stretch, don't it? But Black does have a bind on the K-side, so maybe the notion isn't so far fetched after all.

H'mmm. At first I thought I was joking...   For all that Black's scheme has the menace of a slow moving but inexorable zombie, White seems to have been oblivious to its approach. Somewhere in this sequence White had to get in Kg1-h1 and Rd1-g1, and that was quite feasible.

Why not indeed? But how about this?: 22....Rg1ch 23.Kg2 Bf3! The threat of mate in one forces White to lose the knight!

The full horror of the situation for White is that there isn't a blind thing he can do about it! Probably best - for a given value of 'best' in a game so far down the tubes - would be 24.Nd6 - hardly enticing...

Discovered attacks are quite a theme in this game. Black outplayed his opponent pretty thoroughly in this one! Speaking of 'discovered attacks', though, check out the situation after Black's 10th move. As I said: quite a theme!