Blazing Sadler

Matthew Sadler’s retirement from full-time international chess is one of the great losses to the British game. Occasionally, the one-time prodigy emerges, usually to make a massive score in a rapid or blitz event in the vicinity of Holland, where he now works and lives. It is also fortunate that he still competes in the Four Nations Chess League.
 
This week’s game is a Sadler victory against a former two-times World Championship candidate, Jon Speelman.
 
Sadler-Speelman: 4NCL 2017; French Defence
 
1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 e5 Qd7 The usual move here is 4 … c5 with an immediate challenge to the white pawn centre. Speelman may have chosen the text in the erroneous belief that Sadler would have been less well prepared for it. 5 a3 Bxc3+ Paradoxically, Black may be better off retreating with 5 … Bf8 which makes no concessions in terms of surrendering the bishop pair or weakening the dark squares. An example is Kasparov-Ivanchuk, Horgen 1995, which (with the substitution of 4…b6 for 4…Qd7) continued 5 … Bf8 6 Nf3 Ne7 7 h4 h6 8 h5 a5 9 Bb5+ c6 10 Ba4 Nd7. In this game, Kasparov’s attack ultimately foundered against the impervious nature of the black fortress and Ivanchuk went on to win an historic victory against the world champion. 6 bxc3 b6 Black’s strategic plan becomes evident. His queen defends along the seventh rank, meanwhile Black hopes to trade the light-squared bishops when the pawn configuration will even give him the advantage if he survives to the endgame. On top of this, Black also prepares to castle queenside, thus evacuating the king from White’s attack on the opposite side of the board. The only drawback to this ideal scheme is that it consumes a vast amount of time, which Sadler is quick to exploit.