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Never resign,... that's just friendly



This is an interesting game for two reasons, and an uninteresting one because it contains too many obvious mistakes. I decided the two favorable reasons would take precedence.

Firstly, the opening is a not too frequent treatment of the English opening that can be adopted by Black (against most White setups, but not all) or by White (against the symmetrical variation). Very often the player with White opts for the English when he expects a long manoeuvering game where his better understanding of the structure (after all, he expects to be more experienced in the English than Black, and quite rightly so) will prevail in the end. A very aggressive treatment by Black, with a direct attack against White's king, is a psychological blow. Of course Black must be wary to commit too much on the kingside if White makes no significant mistake, but White may err quickly on "auto-pilot", as so often happens in non-confrontationnal openings.
This is what happens in this game. Basically White plays alone and ignores Black's plan with an early Bg4. Mikhail Gurevich has shown that Black's plan is the quicker one and that White should have taken defensive measures (after which he's no worse, of course). In the game Black stubbornly refuses to take the b2 pawn, getting 4 "?!" in a row from Stockfish. I persist in this choice for practical reasons : it it much easier to play a one-sided attacking game (even with just a small advantage to start with) than to grab a pawn and play on both sides of the board.
Black's only big mistake in the game happens right after those decisions, but White replies with a plausible move that is even a bigger mistake. After that there is no suspense anymore, Black's attack just crashes through.

Then a new phase of the game starts. With no counterplay, tied pieces and an endgame that can be played a tempo, White doesn't resign, plays the clock (and fails miserably). Maybe he pretends that this is the Mr Dodgy invitational and there is money or a horse picture at stake... But there is no such thing here, it's a "friendly" game . The only effect is to turn a moment of leisure and hopefully shared fun into a bitter exercice remotely connected with chess ("push mouse quick", sort of a game for a 5 year old maybe ?). Fairplay is by definition not compulsory. Fortunately, the Lichess community is mainly playing for fun, not for the sake of spoiling the other player's fun.

I still like Gurevich's recipe in the symmetrical English, though...

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