013. Winning With Someone Else's Moves

White: paardesprong - thematic tournament, ChessWorld.net, 2005

One of the benefits of studying openings is that you can, very occasionally, win games with moves you've worked out entirely at home. Or even with someone else's moves that you've just remembered. My most notable instance was against Colin Crouch at the 1990 Nottingham Congress. In a sharp line of the French, Black answered a classic bishop sacrifice on h7 by giving up his queen for three pieces. This was reckoned at one time to offer Black good play but had since been refuted in the game S.Szilagyi-T.Harding, ICCF World Cup 1986. Colin helpfully played straight down this line, stopped, thought for an hour, and then resigned – and a move sooner than in Szilagyi-Harding, so I didn't have to think of a single move for myself.

This hardly ever happens to me in over the board chess anymore. For one thing, I mostly avoid theoretical main lines nowadays; and, for another, I usually find I've forgotten most of my home analysis, even in my own pet lines. In correspondence chess, it's a different matter. With everything written down (or entered on ChessBase), I do still win games where most of my moves have been worked out (and computer checked) in advance. And it's possible to win games with someone else's moves too.

When investigating the Calabrese Counter-Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Bc4 f5!?) in the mid 1990s (see Game 9), I got round to considering what would happen if White replied with 3 f4!?.
It seemed to me that 3...exf4 was the best response, transposing into a variation of the Bishop's Gambit: 1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Bc4 f5!?. Against this, theory recommended that White play 4 Qe2 Qh4+ 5 Kd1 fxe4 6 Qxe4+ Be7 7 Nf3 Qh5 8 Bxg8 Rxg8 9 Nc3 Nc6 10 Re1 d6 11 Nd5 Bf5 12 Qc4 Bxc2+ (intending 13 Kxc2 Qxd5! etc) 13 Ke2.



Here analysis by Igor Glazkov continued 13...Qg6 (L.Hoffer-Grischfeld, London 1882) 14 Kf2! Kd7 15 Rxe7+! and wins, or 13...Ne5 14 Qxc7 Qf7 15 Qxb7 Rd8 16 Kf1! with advantage to White.

But, as it happens, Eric Schiller had refuted all this in his (unfairly disparaged) little book Who's Afraid of the King's Gambit (Chess Enterprises 1989), where he gives 13...Bh4! 14 Nxc7+ (or 14 d4 0-0-0) 14...Kd7 15 Nxa8 Re8+ 16 Kf1 Rxe1+ 17 Nxe1 Qd1 18 g3 fxg3 19 hxg3 (or 19 Qxc2 Qxe1+ 20 Kxe1 gxh2+ 21 Ke2 Nd4+) 19...Bxg3 20 Qe2 Bd3 21 Qxd3 Qxe1+ 22 Kg2 Qf2+ 23 Kh3 Qh2+ 24 Kg4 Ne5+ and Black wins.

This was picked up later (2004) by Thomas Johansson, but did not make it into general circulation. For instance, the one-volume encyclopaedia Nunn's Chess Openings (Everyman, Gambit 1999) stops at 13 Ke2, with an exclamation mark and the symbol denoting that “White is much better”.

So, so far I've won three times as Black after 13 Ke2. The game below was the shortest – and in that one, too, I didn't have to think of a single move for myself.