Chess School Quiz Challenge #4
Challenge
Which side should she play on? Or should she play in the center rather? And what is the next step? Josefine Heinemann (photo) was faced with these questions in the duel of national team players against Lara Schulze. Heinemann found the right answer. Do you, too?
Solution
A bizarre configuration from the German Masters 2023. The far advanced black d-pawn looks like a thorn in White's flesh - but doesn't hurt White at all. White can play around it perfectly, and the two fianchettoed bishops beaming across the board open up prospects on both wings.
With her move 14...c6 Lara Schulze had stabilized her queenside to some extent by killing two birds with one stone: The pressure of the rook on the half-open c-file is neutralized, as is the pressure of the bishop on the long diagonal h1-a8. Now she would like to develop the c8-bishop to a nice square and things wouldn't look so bad for Black.
Josefine Heinemann had long since set her sights on the kingside. The bishop b2 is already eyeing the black castling position on the long diagonal a1-h8, and the knight e4 has made its way towards the black king. Now she still has to find a way to bring her heavy guns to the kingside, the queen and the rooks.
Heinemann found more than that. She also killed two birds with one stone - and moved 15.f4-f5. Powerful! That opens the way for the white queen to g4 and the f1-rook to f4, from where it can switch to the g- or h-file, a rook lift. So much for the one bird.
Not only does 14.f4-f5 open up a path to the kingside for White's heavy guns, but the move also restricts Black's options. The bishop on c8, which remains on the back rank and which Schulze would so like to develop, now no longer finds a good square. The pawn on f5 excludes the bishop from the game. It hinders Black's development and coordination.
When f4-f5 appeared on the board, Heinemann and Schulze must have been thinking of a classic game that is part of the basics of chess training for international players. The game between Emanuel Lasker and José Raúl Capablanca, played in St. Petersburg in 1914, is so well-known and instructive that it even has its own Wikipedia entry (in German).
When Lasker went...
...12.f4-f5 the experts wrinkled their noses. What is the world champion doing there? Isn't he weakening the e5-square by dissolving his pawn phalanx? Isn't he condemning his e4-pawn to an existence as a backward pawn that will soon be under pressure on the half-open e-file?
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Emanuel Lasker, World Champion 1894-1921. | Photo: National Library of Israel, Schwadron collection, License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.de
Yes and yes. But Lasker had thought further and deeper. Although he makes two positional concessions, he gets all the more in return. "Chess is a bartering game", as German grandmaster and chess coach Michael Prusikin likes to say about such positions.
Firstly and most importantly, as we already know, the f5-pawn restricts the c8-bishop, as in the Heinemann-Schulze game. Black now finds it more difficult to develop and coordinate. White on the other hand finds it easier thanks to the clever pawn move, which has opened the way for the c1-bishop.
What's more, White has conquered a splendid square deep in the black camp, an outpost: a white knight will potentially feel right at home on e6 - where it would mutate from a horse into an "octopus". That's what we call knights which, planted in the middle of the opponent's camp, spread like tentacles. The idle knight b3 is already ready to hop over d4 to e6 to become an octopus.
