Friday, August 6, 2010

A trap in the Slav

After 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Bg4?! (3...Nf6 is normal) 4.Ne5 Bh5 5.Qb3!, Black must play 5...Qc8! As the game below shows, the natural 5...Qb6? is a fatal blunder.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice unstereotypical attack Qb3-h3! The 'pin' on White's e pawn with 4...Bh5 encouraged the strong response Qb3!

I wonder if a better case could be made for the retreat 4...Be6!?

Frederick Rhine said...

Well, 4...Be6 has only been played a couple of times that I can determine, but it's scored a lot better (+1 -1) then the "normal" moves 4...Bf5, 4...Bh5, and 4...Nf6.

Frederick Rhine said...

Sorry, forgot the URL: http://tinyurl.com/27fugnd

Frederick Rhine said...

And "then" should be "than" - sigh.