Jim West On Chess: Improvements in Rubenfeld

Friday, July 9, 2010

Improvements in Rubenfeld - West

At Contre Gambit Philidor, Frederic Fournier has provided a link to my game as Black against David Rubenfeld, who missed two opportunities to capture on d5.

This diagrammed position occurred after 19...Na5. White could have played 20.Bxd5! with a clear advantage. My plan of 16...a6, 18...b5, and 19...Na5 was faulty. I should have played 16...h4 with the idea of 17...Qe5 and 18...Qd6.

The second diagram shows the position after 23...Nf5, a mistake allowing 24.Nxd5! which my opponent overlooked. A better move for me would have been 23...Nc6.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov