Space and the Marching King
While preparing for the Hamilton Summer Open (Aug. 20, 21) and the Labour Day Open (Sep. 3-5), I stumbled upon a super interesting game played by Nigel Short. I have the feeling I've seen it before which makes a lot of sense, seeing how beautiful it is.
Unlike most tournaments, I've decided to prepare for these ones differently. Rather than spending most/all my time on opening (read: dragon) lines and tactics training, I've been studying a couple GM games from various openings just to figure out where I should be putting my pieces, and what my general plan is. In the past few tournaments, I've found myself in fairly obscure positions where I had to make critical decisions in terms of a long-term plan. When I wasn't in a familiar position, I almost always made the wrong choice. Hopefully this form of preparation will fix that.
Long story short, this blog is more for me than anything. I'm hoping by annotating a 'model' game, I will be able to understand exactly what features/ideas matter and should be employed in various openings.
At the same time, this should be fairly educational for all 1. e4 players.