In the last 18 months or so I've totally thrown away my opening books, in this tournament it's hurt me but now that I've done it I'll be in a better position to understand any opening study I do from here on. Anyway- tonight I played a semi-slav against a 1900 player, I think it's one of the few openings in my repetoire I understand really well and hopefully I can pass on some useful advice in it.
I'll preface this by saying I think I'm enjoying my chess more than ever when playing the Semi-Slav, some might look at pawns on e & c6, a lack of space and a horrible c8 bishop for black and just discount it as "not for them" (I certainly did, which is why I struggled with the "hyper aggressive" KID for a long time). The fact is that the semi-slav is full of strategy and usually results in an attack on the white King based on weak colour complexes and so on. Anyhow- here's the game, soon i'll do a wider study of the semi-slav on this here blog!
Not the most glorious of wins and it shows that even after having played the opening well, playing a move (14. Ne5!?) that let white make things very tricky, rather than finding the pacifying Qc5 turned a good opening phase on it's head.
In summary, play the Semi-Slav, it's awesome.
PS. For anyone looking for a bunch of annotated games on the Semi-Slav, find Andrew Soltis' "Pawn Structure Chess". Amazing book.
Ah, no music with the chess chatter :)
ReplyDeleteI cannot say that I play the Slav ( yet ) but I am certainly interested in it.
I am not a d4 player myself, as I still struggle with e4, but I think I will like the type of positions and its rationale. At the moment I tend to play the Dutch or the King's Indian against d4, although I don't meet d4 very often outside of blitz.
I think I will be heading more down the Exchange Slav variety than Semi Slav, but who knows ! I've only just started to look, so will lap up your notes !
Good luck for the rest of the tournament.
Hey S:)
ReplyDeleteThanks, one round left against the najdorf which i'll post about over the week! The long battle to learn the open Sicilian ideas is just beginning.
I started with the KID and was losing before games really got started. Maybe it was my level or how I was studying, but in general I feel like the KID is a "defence" for a 2000+ player.
One thing's for sure: if you take up the semi-slav (and I assume the slav too) you'll learn a lot about chess.