I once heard the Torre Attack described as The Old Man's Bad Habit (Aagaard), and no less a tribute can be paid to the London...
"One problem is that this is actually a pretty good opening"
-- Christof Sielecki
The original idea of the London System was as an Anti-KID weapon in the tournament in our capital in 1922, fighting for the control of central dark squares.
I played at the East Devon Chess Congress earlier this year alongside my
longstanding friend and team-mate Charlie Keen. During a break between
games, we went over one of his encounters, looking for tips for next
time. The critical position was this one:
We lost on board count to old rivals Teignmouth in the Peter Rooke Cup
at the end of January. One of the last games to finish involved a
simple-looking Rook endgame. Just as it was getting crucial, White,
short of time, found a time-saving blunder:
"When I am White I win because I am White, when I am Black I win
because I am Bogoljubow." - Efim Bogoljubow.
I'm still thinking about this, so bear with me, and comments
invited...
I pounced on Nunn's Chess Openings when it came out, and
found some things that I found puzzling. Openings like the
Dutch Stonewall, which I had always thought of as being
fundamentally flawed, were being shown as equal, while
the Classical Dutch - which I thought was a superior approach - was coming out as +=.
If you have an Isolated Queen's Pawn, you have outposts on c5 and e5, a half-open e-file, more space, more mobility, and more chances of attacking - on either side, I guess, but the e5 outpost suggests the King's-side. On a good day, it works like this:
A four-board match played away at Exmouth one Saturday:
The top board players each made a mistake on move 5: 1.c4 e5 2.g3 Nc6 3.Bg2 f5 4.Nc3 Nf6 now 5.e3(?) was possibly inaccurate, allowing 5...d5! (see Kosten’s book) but Black didn't play it, preferring 5...Be7.
The Queen check is supposed to weaken the black King's-side, but it also has some benefits for Black; f5 is strengthened and the g7 square can be a bolt-hole for the black Queen.
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF ANALYSIS:
"The word "combination" means different things to different people."
"... I bid farewell to my readers in the hope that they have formed their own opinion as to the meaning of the word "combination"."
The Chess Combination from Philidor to Karpov
"(3) 'IS IT A SYSTEM...?'
... Ultimately, I suspect, this is a question about which the reader should form his own judgement by study of the original text."
