Analysis
The game in detail
IM Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas (PER, 2398) vs GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778) · 0-1
Round 2, Uzbekistan vs Peru · Sicilian Defence, French Variation, Westerinen Attack (B40)
By Professor Zugzwang AI Coach . This analysis was written by a Bogner Chess AI coach.
Round two in Samarkand, Black against an IM rated 380 points lower. Flores Quillas picks the quietest set-up available against the Sicilian: , bishop to b2, fianchetto on both wings, an exchange in the centre. Up to move twelve there is nothing on the board worth writing down.
Thirty-two moves later White resigns, because his king is sitting on g5 in the middle of the board and mate in three can no longer be stopped. Sindarov has left his queen en prise for the last three moves. That is not an oversight, it is the reason there is a mate at all.
A pawn that is only worth taking with check
attacks the knight on f6, and Sindarov inserts before moving it. That exchange matters more than anything else in the game, and it does not look like it: with the bishop on g2 goes the only white bishop that can ever set foot on a light square. White is left with a dark-squared bishop and a king on g2.
After nothing defends the c2 pawn any more. was already available and is a shade better than the game move; Sindarov plays , hits the knight on e4 and asks White a question. The difference between the two is less than a fifth of a pawn, so a matter of taste.
defends the knight and opens the second rank while doing it. Now comes with check, White has to interpose the rook and never gets to chase the queen down the c-file. She walks home at her leisure: , onto the long diagonal her own bishop cleared back on move twelve. Before you take a pawn, work out the way back for your queen, and remember that a tempo is often worth more than the pawn.
IM Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas (PER, 2398)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
The bishop has to go back: 21...Be7
puts the knight on the best outpost the position has to offer. hits the rook on c1 and costs about a quarter of a pawn next to the solid ; White drives the bishop away with .
is entirely natural, and it is the moment the last white kingside pawn steps onto a dark square. A pawn always guards the colour it stands on, so f4, g3 and h2 between them guard not one light square. f1, g2, g4 and h5 are left without pawn cover, and the bishop that would have watched them has been gone since move twelve.
is the one move that keeps the edge, and it looks like taking a move back. The obvious leaves White three quarters of a pawn better: from g5 the bishop does not cover d6, so the queen recaptures instead of the pawn. is a good deal worse still.
One move later the bishop does cover d6 from e7, and that is why works now: would cost the queen for a bishop, so is forced. Retreating is not undoing a move, it is bringing up the second piece to the square that matters.
IM Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas (PER, 2398)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
The quiet move everything hangs on: 22.Kh3
would have offered the queen trade and held the position: without queens an extra pawn is worth little in this structure. costs a good half pawn, and that is not the damage. The move picks the address the king will not be able to leave ten moves later.
trades off the strong knight and hands White a pawn on d6 that is glued to the black pawn on d7. is forced, because that pawn attacks the bishop on e7: drops a piece, leaves White more than three pawns better.
From f6 the bishop hits the white queen, and after all four bishops are off the board. Black is a pawn up, and everything left around the white king is his own pawns on dark squares. If you are giving up your light-squared bishop, first look at where your king will be spending the rest of the game.
IM Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas (PER, 2398)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
The rook on c7 can stay where it is
offers the rook and Black leaves it alone. The reason is the pawn on d6: after a white pawn stands one square from promoting and the last black rook is tied to c8 for the rest of the game. The difference to the game move is small, but it points the right way.
comes down the a6-f1 diagonal instead, and it is check because the king is on h3. No white pawn covers f1 or g2, the bishop that would has been gone since move twelve, and the queen is suddenly behind the white position. has to interpose.
Then comes : the pawn takes g4 away from the white king and is more than a full pawn better than any alternative. would have offered the queen trade and taken the sting out of the attack, declines it and costs another two pawns and more. When you hunt a king that has walked into the open, count his squares first and the material second.
IM Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas (PER, 2398)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
The queen is hanging, and that is the point: 29...Rf6
attacks the black queen. leaves her standing, because is mate: the king cannot go to g4, which the f5 pawn covers, nor to h4, which the rook covers, and everything else around him is his own men. Almost nobody at this level finds that rook move.
White still had , queen for rook, and would have been lost anyway. What was played is , and now the king has not one square left in the middle of the board: the g7 pawn covers f6 and h6, the h7 pawn covers g6, the rook covers h4 and h5, the f5 pawn covers g4, on f4 stands his own pawn, and f5 is covered by the pawn on e6.
is the move of the game. No check, no capture, his own queen still hanging, and nobody at this level plays it. Its entire content is the mate that follows: it comes from the h7 pawn, and since that pawn gives up its guard of g6 on the way to h6, the black king has to take the square over first. Without the king move White escapes with , and the mate turns into a level position.
After White resigned. The rook leaves h6 because the king covers f6 and g6 now, and from h3 it watches h4, h5 and h6: . In a mating net the quiet move is nearly always the one that takes the king his last square, and your own king is an ordinary piece while you build it.
IM Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas (PER, 2398)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
Verdict
Flores Quillas missed nothing crude, and the game was roughly balanced up to move twenty-one. He lost it around move twenty-seven, with and , but his king had taken up its address much earlier, with , a move that looks like nothing at all. That is the instructive kind of mistake: not the move after which it is mate, but the quiet one before it. Sindarov, who plays for the world title in Geneva from November, showed two things anybody can take home: only take a pawn once you know the way back for your queen, and in a mating net count the squares the enemy king has left, not the material lying around him.
Moves
0-1
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