Sunday, February 9, 2020

Game of the Month: The Fighting French

For our latest Game of the Month, we'll be taking a look at the game Janezic - Attaya played in the 2nd round of a Saturday tournament at the club. At first glance the game looked like a smooth win, but as we shall see it was not always so clear and both sides missed important chances.



Black's unconventional development approach paid off, although white could have done better than 9.Qb3 by just castling and bringing a rook to the e-file. The real critical moment though was the stretch from moves 15-20, where both sides missed white's strong idea of a2-a4, and black got away with the daring 20. ... c5?! After the final blunder on move 26, black had a nice tactical shot to seal the game in his favor.

Look forward to another post soon! I will be looking at a very interesting opening that appears to have been sweeping Rochester by storm lately...