As I mentioned a few days ago, Jonathan Speelman’s Agony column at chessbase.com featured two of my games this week. I hope you’ll click on over, see what Speelman has to say, and enjoy the thrill of paying without your queen from move six on!
Speelman’s comments are well thought-out and appreciated. Some of the reader comments below the article — well, one of them in particular — were surprising to me, and remind me why you should never read the comments (unless you have a thick skin).
After the first (Pruess) game, Speelman comments, “The queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard but only if she has something to attack. Here Dana defended all of his pieces and left her looking singularly useless.” Indeed, this is a good take-home lesson from the Bryntse Gambit. Getting two pieces and two pawns for a queen gives White a huge numerical advantage in pieces, and as long as they coordinate well and leave no targets, it is very hard for Black to create any kind of counterplay. This is why White’s pressure just keeps going on forever, or until Black cracks.
Although I think it is not worth responding in detail to the reader who wrote, “Just love to hear a show-off rambling on…” let me say that I do sort of understand his point. One thing that a writer has to learn is the art of self-promotion. Just look at the blurbs on any book, some of which are likely to have been written by the writer himself. I do think I have a tendency to forget that such extreme self-promotional behavior will be off-putting to some people and in some circumstances. I don’t think that I was always a show-off, and I don’t even feel as if I am a show-off now, but alas, modesty is poorly rewarded in the writing business.
Anyway, I was glad that the other comments were more positive, and glad that Speelman gave me space in his column to promote the Bryntse Gambit. That’s really my main point. It’s not about the games that I played, but the games that you can play with this wonderful and incredibly fun opening!
