Jim West On Chess: From Queens with Lev

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

From Queens with Lev

Last month, at the Queens Chess Club championship, candidate master Lev Zilbermintz [pictured] lost this game as Black, playing his Newark Gambit variation 4...b5 in the Philidor Counter Gambit.

From the diagrammed position after 9.O-O, Fritz8 recommends 9...a5 as an improvement with the idea of 10.Nxe4 dxe4 11.Qh5+ g6 12.Qe5 Rg8 13.Bxh6 Bxh6 14.e7 Qxe7 15.Qxe7+ Kxe7 16.Bxg8 Kxf8 17.Bxh7 Kg7 18.Nc3 Bf5 19.Rfe1 Bd2 20.g4 Bxe1 21.Rxe1 Bc8 22.Bxg6 Kxg6 23.h3 Be6 24.f4 Bd5 25.Rd1 Na6 26.Nxd5 cxd5 27.Rxd5 Nb4 with a slight advantage for White.

"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