01 January 2016

Who is Better?

This position arose in Morozevich -- Bareev, Sarajevo 1999 (Chess Informant 75/264). Does Black already stand better, or did White err in the middle game? Perhaps this game was decided in the ending.

White to move

Morozevich played 14.Bg3 and Bareev went on to win after a long struggle. It was the my sixth study game this morning. I went through the game quickly, then marked it for further study.

Having identified the Steinitz variation as a weak point in my handling of the French Defense, I am laboring to transform weakness into strength. The first step involves absorbing patterns by rapidly playing through a large body of games.

My resource is the Paramount Database. The indexing system that this database brings to the material in all Informants 1-123 is proving useful. A list of the most popular openings contains links to all games in that opening. There are 588 games classified C11. I am working through all of these games, learning patterns. Sometimes I race through a game in two minutes. Sometimes I print a copy of the game for further study on a physical chess board after my first pass through the list.

The games published in Informant contain the development of theory in this opening through the past half century. When I return to study of opening monographs, the reference games will be familiar.

Morozevich -- Bareev is game 292 in the list of 588. Both players are devotees of the French Defense and have had many games published in Informant through the years.

The diagram position was reached at least once since 1999 in Wongwichit -- Song, Australian Open 2005. White played 14.Kb1 and went on to lose in 25 moves.

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