Beating the Najdorf (4) - Tactics!
Submitted by
on Tue, 03/03/2009 at 7:57am.
People who play the 6. Bg5 Najdorf won't be surprised to see the word "tactics" in the title. Especially not if I also mention that the game I'm talking about was in the poisoned pawn variation (7... Qb6 8. Qd2 Qxb2). Games in that variation are nearly always highly tactical and very sharp. Both sides have to be very accurate not to lose.
A game I played online against an International Master pretty much fit the above description. We followed a drawing variation for the first 19 moves, but I wasn't going to take the draw and set a first tactical trap with 20. Kh1, threatening 21. e5 and 22. Bb6. Black defended well, but on move 24 I still won a pawn back. Black tried opening the center to give his pieces some space, but after a forced sequence of moves, my dark-squared bishop turned out to be very strong on e5. This eventually lead to a nice final combination starting with 31. d7!? (opening the e5-b8 diagonal; however, 31. Rb7! was even stronger) Rg8 32. Qg4! (threatening 33. Rb8, although with black's rook hanging on a6, 32. Rb8! was also possible) Qd8 33. Rb8! Qxd7 44. Rff8! Nf2+ 45. Kg1! with mate to follow.
Below is the game with annotations.
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