Hi Bullrock,

Brutal finish to this game! When I see that many attacking pieces swarming over an enemy king, I'm reminded of the opening scene of RoboCop (Yeah, I borrowed that line from Family Guy).

Seriously, great lesson about the f-pawn here. Anybody moving the f-pawn in the opening better know exactly what they're doing or else life gets complicated in a hurry. John Emms adamantly emphasizes this point in his book Discovering Chess Openings for 158 pages before finally giving a circumstance when it is a viable option. Thanks for posting this video. The early opportunity to exploit the exposed king is good for people to see.

-BoyHowdy

Thanks for watching and commenting, BoyHowdy. Did you mean that Emms discussed the dangers of moving the f-pawn for 158 straight pages? If so, I'm going to have to check out his book as it sounds like a very interesting read.

I don't mean to say that the book was only about the f-pawn, but it's a theme that he returns to often without giving any positives about f-pawn moves until page 159.

I can definitely recommend the book! It's the reason I'm able to process the lines of the French defense in a way that is meaningful. It also helped me visualize opening schemes and move orders when I'm playing an opening I haven't studied. Would I be blaspheming if I said this book actually made a bigger difference in my play than one of Silman's books?!

-BoyHowdy

Nice game BullRock. Over the past couple of weeks I've had a few games against f-pawn pushers. The first one caught me so off guard it messed up my whole game to the point of me flagging, the next two (after a little research) I was better prepared and did a mop up job on my opponents (although it may have been a case of them not knowing why they should push the f-pawn, so I don't want to take too much credit).

nice! , should have more correspondance chess matches here!.
Any idea why is the chessvideos.tv team not taking challenges from other teams??? at the chess.com site ?

I experimented with Bird's opening recently which of course opens 1.f4 and while I didn't get slaughtered in the games, I did not have much success with it. I thought since it seemed aggressive it might lead to some quick victories, but instead it led to long positional battles. Evidence that I just don't understand the Bird's? Very likely. I have come to realize that moving your f pawn without really knowing what you are doing will very likely cause more trouble for you than for your opponent. So, it's nice to hear you have had success punishing your opponents when they moved their f pawns. And thanks for watching and commenting.

Thanks! My opponent helped my attack along in this game. I'm guilty of doing that often, too. I was happy that this time I was on the receiving end of the mistakes and not the one making them. But, I have another game against this same opponent and here's hoping that game will go likewise!

As for the team matches, I can't say. I haven't really explored all of chess.com's features yet...too busy with the 19 tournaments I've entered on that site. I'm worried that all of those tournaments are going to start the second rounds all at the same time and I'll be flooded with games, but so far it hasn't happened.