The move frees up the white queen, which is stuck at an unfortunate corner square otherwise. The light-squared bishop too can come out easily.
1Black's intentions are the same as White's, only he seems not to be bothered about the space argument. The bishop and queen are deployed, but not as aggressively as White did.
On the top board, Carlsen too is following a similar strategy, and aims to play for the long light-square diagonal, with these two characteristic pawn moves.
2But it is not entirely clear if this would be especially useful in the middlegame.
White's aim seems to be targeting the long light-square diagonal, which he can target by bringing the bishop out soon.
3The knight also keeps an eye on the white pawn, discouraging further pushes in the flank.
Aravindh develops the bishop on the light diagonal, setting up a battery along with his queen. The move also threatens further push of the pawn, thus coming up with a solid threat.
It is not often that we see such concrete operations in the opening phase in classical chess. Freestyle chess seems to give players such freedom, somehow not to be bothered with 'conventional correctness' in opening strategy.
And, certainly, this being the first round, playing against a much lower rated opponent, must also be factors in Aravindh's decision to play such direct chess.
4Black brings out the queen, seemingly to prevent White's flank pawn from being advancing further. But Black violates an important opening principle: Do not bring your queen out into the game early.
The logic behind discouraging the queen to come out early is that, the queen being the most valuable of all pieces, the enemy pieces can develop faster and developed to better squares, by attacking such a queen.
Just as we anticipated, White aims to take advantage of black's early wayward queen.
5Black makes another queen move, running away from White's threat, and keeps his queen on the edge.
Typically, in classical chess, bishops placed on such long diagonals lead to slow-maneuvering, strategic games. But that's the hardly the case in the current game. With both sides having such unconventional pawn structures, the game is bound to be tactical.
6A typical pawn sacrifice in the opening by Aravndh. But typically, when one of the sides sacrifices such a pawn, he will achieve concrete compensation. Either in time, space or in controlling squares.
7Instead of capturing the free pawn, Black wishes to develop his light-colored bishop too in the long diagonal, and exchange off the white bishop in the same diagonal. Thus, Black wishes to lessen pressure on his position by exchanging pieces.
By doing thus, White aims to push the pawn even further, thus achieving a clear space advantage.
White's offer to give up his flank pawn for free still holds. However, now White has clear ways to achieve compensation for the sacrificed pawn, with development advantage, as well as attacking the black pawn by developing his own knight.
8This is a sign that the game is going in White's favor. When he can make such natural developing moves even while generating threats, however simple they are.
9Black makes a tiny mistake, exchanging off an important pawn. Now, with a certain freeing up of his position, White's position gets much better.
With such pawn presence in the center and by developing his pieces, White might soon begin to dominate the game.
10At a critical juncture, Aravindh took a 25-minute thought and came up with the most accurate move in the position. Now, the black queen is under threat by the white pieces. The black queen might even get trapped if Black is not careful here. At least, Black is forced to weaken his king position now, to save his queen.
The bishop move per se might appear routine, nothing special. Attacking the black queen is indeed crucial, and hence the the bishop move might appear justified.
But what makes the bishop move difficult and not very routine is that, it is a backward move by the bishop. Such moves are always difficult to find on the board, as a player has to overcome his own inhibhitions to bring a bishop backward to the square where it originally started from. When it has already been developed and was occupying a better square. So, it is not a technically better move - it's a psychologically difficult decision.
11Now the black pawn comes in between the white bishop and the black queen, thus saving the queen from the bishop's attack. The drawback of the move is that, the black king gets significantly weakened here, which will make it easy for White to mount an attack now.
Aravindh continues with great energy, playing accurately as the position demands.
White opens up the position and goes in for the kill now. It starts with attacking the black knight and driving it away. It will pave way for the white knight to jump into the queenside and attack the black queen.
12This is more out of necessity than by choice. Now White will use the knight's unstable position to attack the poor piece.
Aravindh plays energetically, his queen jumping into play attacking the black knight.
1314White knight jumps into the fight, attacking the black queen.
A crucial decision, exchanging off the queens. White correctly judges that the resultant endgame will be favourable for him.
Continuing with accuracy, the white bishop comes back to the long diagonal, giving a check to the black king. Since the black king cannot move away (there is a rook behind the king), he will be forced to defend the position weakening himself even further.
A favourable exchange for White, gaining the black bishop for a white knight
White mobilizes his pieces for the final assault. More than anything, Black has a poor pawn structure, making them vulnerable for an attack by the white pieces.
20Supporting the attacked pawn.
This beautifully centralized knight gives such a pretty picture. White has a clearly dominating position now.
21The black knights provide maximum resistance and try to keep the position intact. But Black has too many holes to plug in his position.
Bringing a rook into the attack, to invade into Black's position.
22Trying to bring the black into defending the seventh rank - an important invasion point for the white rook.
2324Black will regret this pawn-push later: it will serve as a target to White's attack later on.
Finally, White's only undeveloped piece joins the party. Notice how White's all the pieces are harmoniously placed and attacking the black position here.
25This is one of those positions where White has to get down, think it out and find one of those final tactical blows to win the game.
26Black is trying to create counterplay, threatening to capture White's flank pawn, as well as come to the center to hold the position.
White allows Black to create counterplay. Instead, an exchange of the knights would have given him a clear advantage in the position.
There was no need to part with the dear bishop! White could have instead opted to attack the black knights.
29This knight move tilts the game in White's favor. Now, the black king will be hunted down by White's pieces.
White gets the tactical thread of the position - sometime in near future, there will be a knight fork exploiting the black king's position.
White wins the exchange, and thus the game!
Aravindh played energetically from the opening phase, creating tactical chances by playing energetically. Black's decision to bring his queen out early and park it on a flank was the crucial decision that decided the flow of the game.
Aravindh played a near-perfect middlegame, exploiting Black's queen position, and created an overwhelming advantage. At this point, his opponent consumed scores of time on the clock and came under time pressure, too.
However, Aravindh's play towards the end slackened a little, as he did not wrap up the position easily, allowing Black to wiggle out a little. However, Black made tactical errors in defending the position and finally lost against a direct attack on the king.
It might look like, White is taking too much of time to play his move, in an overwhelming position. But strong players as a rule do not hurry even while having a clearly better position. They know that, they need to concentrate that one last time, and then the game will be in the wrap. This is the principle of The Final Concentraiton!
Black is down to his final two minutes on the clock, whereas White has more than twenty minutes here.
A player's clock situation cannot be treated in isolation to the position. It is important that both the time and the position are handled equally well. When one analyzes top players' games, one will always find that they will be conscious of their time spent on the clock, as well how their position holds up. It is almost of no use if the position remains equal but the player has conceded all the time in the clock.
Black is approaching his final five minutes here, while White still has more than half an hour on the clock. This, and the position on the board, thus show that Aravindh holds all the correct cards right now.
For a casual glance, White doesn't seem to possess any great advantage. But the most important factor here is the black queen, which is misplaced. This is the moment when Aravindh has to find the best sequence of moves targeting the black queen.
In chess, such moments are known as Critical Moments. The importance of such moments is that, unless the players sense such moments and find the best continuations, they might let the moment slip. Hence, the advantage of the moment might get lost, thus making an advantageous one into equal or even an inferior position.
Against Aravindh's time of One hour on the clock, Moeller has about 25 minutes now. and still thinking. With just nine moves made on the clock, Moeller is in danger zone now in time management.
From his formative years, Aravindh Chithambram was not someone known for his opening preparation. He was always known as an original players, who tried to steer the game into original territories as early as possible. It is tempting to call him as a 'natural Freestyle player' :-)
Aravindh has a healthy 40-minute advantage on the clock now. That's quite a sizeable lead on time.
Hendrik Moeller is already spending lots of time on the clock, and is now coasting to about half an hour behind on time.
Seeing Aravindh's direct action against the opponent's kingside in this game, one can't help but hope that we see such games often in Freestyle chess. After all, conventional chess too developed in the early 19th century in such a way, commonly known as the Romantic Era, with such players as Paul Morphy, Adolf Anderssen, and Alexander McDonnell. When tactical play and direct action was the order of the day, not to be bothered with positional considerations such as pawn structures, center control etc.
Carlsen, Arjun, and So were the other top players who too preferred Aravindh's first move in the opening.
Unlike a tournament where the starting position is announced about 15 minutes before the game, it is a little cruel that you have to play the game as soon as the position is announced!
After all, we can interpret that Black has an advantage on the first move, as White has to think at least a l.i.t.t.l.e before making the first move, which gives Black time to think about his position a little more.
As we await the moves of the first round, note that our man Aravindh is one of the biggest Elo gainers in the past year or so...
We had already listed out many reasons why you should be following the Grenke Freestyle Open!
This is a Freestyle tournament with the participation of some of the world’s best chess players! Unlike the Paris Freestyle Grand Slam, which concluded a couple of days ago, the Grenke provides even much lower-rated players to play with the best of the best, especially in the first few rounds.
This game will be a unique opportunity for us to understand an important question about opening preparation: is an elite player in the world is superior to a lower-rated opponent even without superior knowledge of opening theory? We might get an answer today.
Thus, we have the first round encounter here, pitting GM Aravindh Chithamabram (2749) against FM Hendrik Moeller (2217). What can we expect? The way both players will approach the opening stage will definitely be interesting to watch. But, once the middlegame forms, when knowledge of patterns will be of importance, the stronger player might be expected to show superior understanding…
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