LESSONS: The Importance of the Center

I can still remember my astonishment at his 9th move. Wasn't he simply castling into it?!

Okay, looking back at it now, my optimism there seems pretty naive; but I was still young, and...well, naive. At any rate, it seemed destined to be one of those pulse-pounding free-for-alls with mutual pawn storms and general mayhem. Just the sort of thing I'd grown to love from high school chess club.

Only he didn't go along with that at all. I mean, he didn't push a single kingside pawn. No h4, no g4--nothing. None of those de rigueur ideas! Just kind of clumped his pieces in the center and sat there. Waiting.

Perhaps he was waiting for me to realize that that d5-pawn really puts a crimp into any attempts at a queenside pawn advance. And that I've just run my king rook out of room too. By the time 12 Bc5 came along, I noticed I was getting rather squished.

At any rate, what this game did was to help me realize that as long as you're strong in the center, you can face open lines (and more) with impunity.

(Oh yeah, and for his 18th move my opponent made an odd choice: 18 Qa3+. Which made the game last a lot longer than it should've. At least I did get to play Bxf4...thus giving him one of the worst pawn structures in history.) :)