Friday, January 20, 2012

Take the darn pawn, Gauri!

Here's the game featured at the end of yesterday's YouTube coverage of the Whitney Young - Glenbrook South match.

The caption for this blog post is of course tongue-in-cheek. 8...Qxb2 is the famous Najdorf Poisoned Pawn: objectively, it's the best move in the position, but players who haven't done their homework are asking for trouble.
For more coverage of the tournament from a frankly biased CPS perspective (I'm cool with that!) and for some quality trash-talking in the comments, see the Chicago Public League Sports Blog.

3 comments:

Gauri said...

Bill, you're right I shoulda "taken the darn pawn." But my opening strategy did work, as I equalized fairly easily and then got a better position. Then ...Rxc3 happened, and instead of taking the perpetual, I tried way too hard.

Albert Chow said...

Perhaps eating this poisoned pawn with 8...Qxb2 is also asking for trouble. White has a dangerous initiative after 9.Nb3 or 9.Rb1!

Bill Brock said...

Yes, there's a reason it's called the Poisoned Pawn.

But fans want to see blood! ;-)