The Petroff Squeeze

by GM Magesh and GM Arun

While some very young and vibrant chess talents are battling it out in the Dubai open, the Bundesliga league as always has some of the strongest pulling their brains out to take their teams home successfully.

Chess players like Musicians and Artists derive plenty of pleasure from a well played game. Nothing can beat that feeling of “Yeah, I saw that move of yours and planned something ahead to counter that.” Our first game I am sure would have given just that satisfying feeling to the Russian Grandmaster Peter Svidler who displayed very good positional skills to outplay his counterpart from Azerbaijan, Vugar Gashimov.

Given that I have shown you a very well executed win from the Russian super Grandmaster, it is time for me to soak in some of my own glory! I had a very similar game about a year ago in the same opening. The one difference being that I was playing a weaker opponent, making my life a little easier.

A bishop pair is a deadly weapon in the game of Chess. Material advantage and other direct advantages gets your opponent concerned and they try to defend hard, but some subtle positional advantages such as a bishop pair makes your opponent think throughout the game that they are 'this' close to equalizing the game. When that equality evades them throughout the game, they will eventually crumble under pressure. We hope these games gave you an idea about this particular opening and the positional ideas in the middle game arising out of it.