Raymond Keene

David and the Giants

The overall scores of the exceedingly strong combined rapid and blitz tournaments in St Louis were as follows: 1. Aronian 24½;
 
2= Karjakin and Nakamura 21½; 4. Nepomniachtchi 20; 5= Dominguez, Caruana and Le 16½; 8. Kasparov 16; 9. Anand 14; 10. Navara 13. As an indication of the elite nature of this competition, the bottom-placed contestant, David Navara from the Czech Republic, succeeded in defeating former world champion Garry Kasparov and Sergei Karjakin, the outright winner of the blitz section.
 
Karjakin-Navara; St Louis Blitz 2017;
Caro-Kann Defence
 
1 e4 c6 2 Nf3 More usual is 2 d4. 2 … d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nf6 Against the variation chosen by White this knight challenge is eminently feasible. In the variations emanating from 2 d4, some doubt can be cast upon Black’s willingness to disrupt his own pawn formation by developing the white king’s knight on e2. Here, of course, that option is no longer available. 5 Nxf6+ exf6 6 Bc4 Bd6 7 Qe2+ Be7 A loss of tempo but Black plans to bring his king’s rook to e8 when White in turn will have to waste time with his queen. 8 0-0 0-0 9 d4 Bd6 The bishop returns to an important diagonal. It is instructive to observe how White seems to suffer from problems based on possible alignment of Black’s dark-squared bishop and his queen in the b8-h2 trajectory. 10 c3 Na6 11 Qc2 Re8 12 Nd2 Nc7 13 Bd3 g6 14 Ne4 Bf8 15 Bd2 f5 16 Ng3 Nd5 17 Rfe1 Be6 (see diagram 1) 18 Nf1 White appears to be bereft of a plan. Instead of this retreat and the feeble weakening move that follows, White should store up energy with 18 Rad1. 18 … Bd6 The bishop returns to its natural post. 19 h3 Nf4 Even more aggressive is 19 … Qh4.






Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in