A trap in the Caro-Kann Defense, Exchange Variation

I found this trap in Amatzia Avni's excellent book Danger in Chess: How to Avoid Making Blunders. The identical trap can arise by transposition from other openings, such as the London System (1.d4 d5 2.Bf4). The winning idea is sufficiently unusual that most White players missed it - ChessBase shows that in the position after Black's 12th move, only 5 out of 31 players found the winning move! All six masters and experts that reached the position played 13.Nxe5??, scoring only 3-3.

A trap in the London System

In the game below, 4...e5!, forking White's knight and bishop, wins a piece since Black's pawn, seemingly hanging, is indirectly guarded by ...Qa5+. My inspiration for this trap was NN-Pandolfini, a Kan Sicilian with the same motif: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Bf4?? e5! The concept was also seen in Zaitsik-Zichulidze, Tiflis 1976 , which is the same as my game, but with colors reversed and White having the extra move g3.

Young 1 - Eckert 0

I've known Doug Eckert since he was in high school, and I owe my only win against Morris Giles to a book Doug wrote on the Keres Attack.

Angelo trots out one of his patented knuckleball openings. 5...Nh5!? (instead of Doug's 5...O-O, also the choice of most top players) has scored extremely well for Black, but obviously Angelo had something prepared against that. After 13.Qb4!, it becomes clear that Black responded a mite too actively to White's seemingly passive opening. The rest of the game, we see Angelo Young switch from Petrosian mode to Capablanca mode. It's hard to point to Black's decisive mistake (maybe 24...Rd8). Very nice game!

Board 3: an optical advantage?

Back to last week's Blaze win against the San Francisco Mechanics....

The London System has an innocuous reputation, but it's a dangerous weapon in Angelo Young's hands. White has a beautiful-looking (almost winning?) position after 17 moves, but Angelo couldn't find a way to convert.

18.e6!? is an interesting try in the diagrammed position below: the Rh8 gets trapped in some variations. But Black seems to be able to defend here, too. Thoughts?