FM John Delaney annotates!
Delaney, J (2227) - Short, P (2309)
Irish Ch (5), 2009
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 b6
A surprise with the effect that I had
little opening knowledge and
certainly
nothing
later
than
something I read in 1987.... Philip is
a terribly dangerous soul with those
Knights of his and I often think I
ought to sit down and find an
opening where I get to do Bishop
takes Knight twice and then simply
grin across at him! In the French he
likes to attack with ...g5 and ... h5 too
which is not a pleasant prospect to
face. So, yes, I could see what was
coming already but stood helpless....
5.Qg4 Bf8 6.Bg5 My memory was
that Tal played this once and that it
was a problem if Black tried ....Ne7
as I could take that Knight with the
Bishop and there would be a trick
(Nxd5) which would force black to
retake with the King. But really it has
little meaning as a trick as Black
plays the Queen to d7 in this line in
any case. 6...Qd7 7.Nf3 Ba6 8.Bxa6
Of course Philip was right in saying
after the game that I ought to make
this
positional
achievement
somewhat more difficult. I simply
decided to go for quick activity,
assuming this was a less theoretical
line just in case Philip had bought a
laptop recently.... 8...Nxa6 9.O-O h6
10.Bd2!? Ne7 11.h4 c6 During the
game I felt that this was sufficiently
slow as a plan to justify the White
play. I was of course playing like Tal
[I had the cheek to say this after the
game...] and Philip was now playing
like Petrosian [his response to me
when I cited Tal!] 12.Nd1 Nc7 13.a4
O-O-O You play a4 to dissuade
Queen-side castles, and he just goes
ahead and castles. These Cork lads
have no shame.... 14.a5 b5 15.Qf4 I
had decided on a Queen sacrifice at
this point but was holding an
emergency exit of some kind if
11 | P a g e
necessary. 15...Nf5 16.Ne3 g5
17.Qg4!? Apparently the Fritz's of
the world explain that 17.Qh2 was
better. One thing I like about this
game is the shockingly bad
assessment that come from Fritz,
which is unaware of what was
significant about the resulting closed
positions. 17...h5 18.Qxg5 Bh6
retrospect that his assessment that
the position is better for Black was
correct and the Queen sacrifice was
wrong. But the key for him in this
position was to now ignore the
possibility of B x Rook, and play
directly for activity on the g-file.
21...Rdf8 22.Bf6 Rhg8 23.Ng5 Rg6
24.Nh7 Black is now getting himself
tied up in knots. 24...Rc8 25.Bg5 and
very nice reorganisation of the
apieces
is appearing. An urgent
attempt (with ... Ne8) to avoid letting
White continue to improve his pieces
is understandable, despite it being a
blunder.
This was the key position. I had seen
that I could now play Qf6 and Black
could draw with Bg7. I had dismissed
this as a likely outcome for this game
and Philip would go for Bxe3. The
choice of then retaking with the
Bishop (bad) or pawn was analysed
and I had decided that White could
wiggle his way out of trouble with a
Rook sacrifice on f5. However I had
in mind the following queen sacrifice,
for initiative and control. 19.Nxf5!?
Bxg5 20.Nd6+ Kb8 21.Bxg5 Would
any sane player give up a Bishop of
such beauty for one of those
unhappy Rooks? I think this was a
difference between us in the game at
this stage. It is not a sacrifice for two
pieces at all, but rather a sacrifice for
a Rook and a piece and the question
was how the Rook was surrendered.
If Black surrendered it by taking a
bishop on say f6, then he would have
a winning position and this was what
White needed to avoid. In attempting
to avoid giving me material Philip ran
into an amusing blunder (time trouble
was looming). But I think, in
25...Ne8?? 26.Nf8 and the amusing
outcome of the Black's greedy
attempt to save one exchange has
led to his losing two exchanges!
26...Qc7 27.Nxg6 fxg6 28.Nxc8
Kxc8 White ought to be winning
trivially here and my time trouble was
little help. The correct action is to
close the Queen side with b4. White
should be immediately watchful of
Black double pawn sacrifices for
activity (Black will still play ... c5 if at
all possible.) But having controlled
for that, White will win. White could
have proceeded as follows: step 1)
c3, Rc1 (preventing ... c5); step 2)
Re1-e3-f3-f4; followed by f3, g4; step
3) a king side file will then open and
the two Rooks should invade causing
significant damage. Not a difficult
winning process and Black would be
Irish Chess Journal