What’s you idea about the ideal chess game? I guess a lot of people will say: 

‘The ideal chess game is a long and difficult fight, full of nice moves and great ideas. After a tough and long struggle I managed to outsmart my opponent and won!’ 

I beg to differ. The ideal chess game is short and totally annihilates the opponent. 

Bobby Fischer once said: ‘Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.’ I completely agree. Problem is that he was slightly more often on the side of the crusher than me. But, believe it or not, once and a while I also experience those glorious moments.

I played the following game on the internet (chess.com) against a Canadian guy. It seems to me that he might be of Dutch descent!? Jantje sounds very Dutch. Who knows. Anyhow he played the Chigorin Defense. It was the first time in my life somebody played this somewhat obscure defense against me.

This defense is named after the Russian grandmaster Mikhail Chigorin. The idea is not to hold on to the pawn center. Normally in the Queens Gambit or the Slav, black supports the pawn on d5 with either e6 or c6. No such thing here. Black concentrates on piece play and  is willing to give up his center pawn. He tries to attack the white center and exchanges his queen’s bishop for the knight on f3, undermining the support for the white d-pawn. In this game black takes this idea to the extreme and is wiped out. See the game in the viewer…

Okay this was an easy one and not quite how Chigorin had intended this opening. You might say ‘Probably your opponent had some very bad days (this was a game with 3 days thinking time per move) or it was a very weak player!’

I agree. This went very smoothly. But even an expert in this opening like grandmaster Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (elo 2743) sometimes hits the brick wall in this opening. See the following rapid game in the viewer…

Here you can read the second part of this blog….