Hi all

This is one of my favorite games from the 2017 Alphazero vs Stockfish 7 match. It shows clearly an amazing pawn installation that claws into key dark squares of the black position and rocks the foundation of the french defence which does invite a bad light square bishop that can't really help contest dark squares quite often and is sometimes just useless like this game shows.

It starts off with 1.d4 but transposes into a French defence:

The Steinitz variation

A central tension release - is this a "principle" being violated instead of the more common Nc6?

Which way to capture here?

Kxd2 of course - the King needs to go to e3 :)

The King is a strong piece as Steinitz used to say:

An amazing part of the game - White to play - what would you play here?

Bxg6 !! UNBELIEVABLE - it is what is behind this that is incredible

Bxg5

Qxg5

fxg6

And what on earth is White's point here?

The f5 pawn break!

And here an "installation" comes:

Qh6

Qf7

And now installing a pawn on f6

Look at those pawn "claws" of the installation

Kd2

Final position

Video annotation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV3-4Vmd63c

Key takeaway points

• I don't see how to appreciate many of the Alphazero games without the concept of "Accumulation of Installations".I think the way it has trained with self-learning is to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Those things that "work" are often visual installations
• This is a very emphatic example of an aggressive pawn installation worth a piece sacrifice
• The Black King in the center really helped justify the piece sacrifice - the dark squares so vulnerable and the French defense light square bishop of no help in key variations

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I hope you enjoyed this blog :). Any likes and follows are really appreciated. Also, I also have some interesting chess courses at https://kingscrusher.tv to check out.
Cheers, K