Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sicilian Najdorf 6.Bg5 with 10.Bd3 and 12...b4

The main line Sicilian Najdorf is the variation that first got me interested in chess journalism. In December of 1972, the year that I joined the United States Chess Federation, grandmaster Robert Byrne analyzed in Chess Life & Review a critical position from game 15 of the Spassky-Fischer match, after the opening moves 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Be7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.O-O-O Nbd7 10.Bd3 b5 11.Rhe1 Bb7 12.Qg3 b4 (instead of Fischer's 12...O-O-O) 13.Nd5 exd5 14.exd5 Kd8 15.Nf5 Bf8 16.Qe3.


Here Byrne considered only 16...Kc8 which leads to slaughter after 17.Qe8+! Qd8 18.Qxf7 Bxd5 19.Qxd5 Nxd5 20.Bxd8 Kxd8 21.Be4 N5b6 22.Bxa8 Nxa8 23.Nxd6.


But what is wrong with 16...Qc5!, I wondered. Being only a Class C player at the time, I lacked the confidence to mail my suggestion to any chess periodicals. Some years later, in the September 1976 issue of Chess Life & Review, grandmaster Leonid Shamkovich included in his column the game Blumenfeld-DeFirmian, Lone Pine 1976 which proceeded 16...Qc5! 17.Qd2 Rc8 18.Kb1 Kc7 and "White's attack dried up."


It was right then and there that I made up my mind to become a chess master and a chess journalist!

{This article originally appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of Empire Chess}