Rating Quest - Ep. 1: London Calling

I've been busy enough that I haven't set aside a ton of time for my 10-minute Rapid games over at chess.com, but I did take some time recently to test fate: My rating at the time was exactly 1700, so either I'd climb a little, drop back into the 1600's, or just have a draw. I ended up with the Black pieces this time around and quickly found myself on familiar ground - 1. d4 Nf6 (I only rarely invite the Queen's Gambit) 2. Bf4. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got ourselves a London.

When I first got back into playing (about two years ago now), I found my way to Levy Rozman's channel and started watching his instructional videos about openings alongside the commentary, the amazing low-ELO games, and his occasional adventures with chess AI. If you know GothamChess you know this means that I started seeing the London System a lot. In my first OTB tournament in 30 years, I even convinced myself that it should be one of my go-to openings, with at best mixed results. Now, I've decided I'm much more an e4 kind of guy and I've become pretty tired of seeing that Bishop pop out to f4 on move 2. I've been trying to get better about actually making plans to DO something about openings that are weak points for me though, and in this case that meant spending some time with Agadamator's Anti-London lesson. I still don't have the greatest system for combining video lessons with good old-fashioned memorization and work with the engine, but I'm working on building up some specific tech against lines I know I struggle with. One of the recommendations he makes in his video is what I went with here: 2. ... c5, 3. e3 Qb6. Putting the Queen out early puts pressure on a few places at once, which means there are plans for how to exert influence on the Queen-side and the chance that you'll just kind of make your opponent nervous and divert them from their comfortable plan to develop pieces. Indeed, my opponent gets a little nervous right away and snaps off the c-pawn, allowing me to counter by grabbing the pawn on b2!

His subsequent 5. Nd2 earns him a great move, because it's one of the only paths out of real trouble. It also puts me in a funny spot because I'm sort of hazy on how this is supposed to work now! Like many players, I often get a little hung up on remembering the details of specific lines and can lose track of making the best move while trying to remember how a particular opening is supposed to work. I also was a little wary about having actually taken the b-pawn, because I remembered that Black has to be careful about letting the Queen get kicked around or trapped over there. So what to do? I decide to fall back on the idea that when in doubt in the opening, natural developing moves aren't usually a terrible idea and play 5 ... Nc6. Already I've missed something though! 5 ... Qb4. keeps up the pressure from the Queen by threatening another pawn. I decide I'll be able to snap it up by kicking the Bishop with an e-pawn advance followed up by capturing while developing my own Bishop. Apparently this isn't very accurate, but luckily for me neither is my opponent at this stage.

Here is where I start missing some fairly obvious good ideas in favor of more dubious ones, though. Qc6 has been a good idea for a while now, but I'm more worried about the center. When I should be keeping up my advantages on the Queenside, I decide to try and mess with his minor pieces with an e5 push to induce a trade while recovering the pawn by capturing on a3. I think I just liked the look of the Queen-Bishop pair on the Queenside, which isn't a good way to strategize. The thing is I feel like at this point I'm trying to balance both my ability to execute clear-headed plans while developing intuitions based on pattern recognition. I keep finding myself at odds with these two modes of playing - do I make that move because I understand what it accomplishes, or do I make this other move because I have an irresistible feeling that it's tactically sharp? As it stands now, we're dead even according to the engine and I have some problems to solve: My light-squared bishop is still stuck at home and my Queen and Bishop may get marooned in that distant corner. My opponent solves one of those problems for me by trading his good knight for undeveloped bishop on c8 (thanks!) and I mostly decide to bring everyone home to regroup and figure out where to go from here. Not the boldest set of moves I've ever made, but I'm feeling like I can play my way to a win as long as I don't leave anything hanging anywhere.

Now I start being too timid, though: I should be shoving that a-pawn up the board to keep putting the question to my opponent. Instead, I keep opting to keep everyone safe and make some kind of boring trades. Nothing terrible, but I miss the chance to seize the option to take a meaningful advantage by trying to protect my isolated c-pawn instead of sending my a-pawn up the board. It takes me a few more moves than it should, but I finally get the hint. My opponent ends up committing to an idea based on stacking up the rooks on the b-file, leaving me with the chance to keep pushing towards promotion and seizing a -3 advantage.

My opponent and I both see that I need my bishop to keep ushering that pawn forward, which means White tries to block that diagonal with a pawn push, but I skirt past it to keep up the guard. Even though I don't choose the best way to do this (apparently c3 was the best home for the Bishop), I can see that my opponent is starting to get very worried about the overall situation and is missing some chances. My misplacement of the Bishop could have let him hassle it with the Rook, but White doesn't bother. When the offer is made to exchange Bishops, I go for it without a second thought: I can tell I'm in the driver's seat here and I don't mind cutting down the options for counterplay.

Now what? Push-push-push! Up to a2 we go and it's hard to see how this can go badly. My opponent's Rook has an unfortunate backstop because of the e-pawn, so I'm free to set up the classic Rook-and-pawn squeeze play on the back rank without interference. Once we get to the position below, it's all but over. We exchange Rooks with a Queen promotion and it's only a few more moves before mate is imminent.

Overall, a pretty satisfying game against the London. I didn't take full advantage of the pressure I was able to build up early in the game, so it's back to the video lesson and the engine to work through some more lines so I have a better sense of the key themes and ideas. Still, it was nice to feel like I was able to disrupt my opponent's plan enough to take the initiative and (mostly) keep White responding to me rather than the other way around. A big weak spot for me that I see here however is understanding when to defend and when to push ahead with my own plans. I clearly burned some advantage in the middle game here just by being a little worried about losing a pawn here or there when I could have put White in serious hot water. I definitely need to work on distinguishing necessary defense against phantom protections for my position. If you have any London war stories (from either side of the board!) you want to share in the comments, I'd love to hear from you! Also, here's the full game below if you want to check it all out yourself.

https://lichess.org/7rOr1tlM