The Horowitz defence at its best...well, for me at least.
Enjoy and critique!
Enjoy and critique!
And how many times does white's d-pawn end up on g7?
You can ignore "inaccuracies" in the opening: Stockfish has no clue.
hxg3 for the second inaccuracy. not sure about the first one.
Took a look. Lets see if I can find the inaccuracies.
3... Nc6: Not a bad square for the knight a lot of the time, but not in this case. It slows down castling. It grants a pinning option. The c-pawn is also penned in.
5... f5: I feel this move is bad because it weakens e5, and it also makes the black king more vulnerable to attack down the line.
16... Kg8 feels wrong. Kg6 makes a little bit more safe king, you see in the following moves where the king continues to flee.
20... h5 can't be right. It's not that urgent. c5 on the other hand keeps more material, and avoids checks better. Maybe it's okay though only because you are up a rook for a bishop.
3... Nc6: Not a bad square for the knight a lot of the time, but not in this case. It slows down castling. It grants a pinning option. The c-pawn is also penned in.
5... f5: I feel this move is bad because it weakens e5, and it also makes the black king more vulnerable to attack down the line.
16... Kg8 feels wrong. Kg6 makes a little bit more safe king, you see in the following moves where the king continues to flee.
20... h5 can't be right. It's not that urgent. c5 on the other hand keeps more material, and avoids checks better. Maybe it's okay though only because you are up a rook for a bishop.
3...Nc6 is not an inaccuracy. It has often been played in correspondence chess and over the board. Example:
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Sorry, @tpr; sorry @SAMWMSRachel; @lurarose nailed it.
According to Stockfish, (which I admit is not infallible) Nc6 and f5 are the two inaccuracies in the game. While SF can mostly be ignored in the opening, f5 is considered risky in any game; here it was part of a last-minute Dutch Defence.
@tpr when you said that Nc6 wasn't an inaccuracy because of that Leko-Morozevich game, the position was slightly different, and Nc6 even then was still considered to not be the "best"move, as the Stockfish score jumped 0.4 pawns in white's favor. Hope you all enjoyed this!
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Sorry, @tpr; sorry @SAMWMSRachel; @lurarose nailed it.
According to Stockfish, (which I admit is not infallible) Nc6 and f5 are the two inaccuracies in the game. While SF can mostly be ignored in the opening, f5 is considered risky in any game; here it was part of a last-minute Dutch Defence.
@tpr when you said that Nc6 wasn't an inaccuracy because of that Leko-Morozevich game, the position was slightly different, and Nc6 even then was still considered to not be the "best"move, as the Stockfish score jumped 0.4 pawns in white's favor. Hope you all enjoyed this!
Stockfish recommends 4 e4 after 3...Nc6, which transposes to the game given above. 3...Nc6 is not an inaccuracy, it is Stockfish that does not understand the position and evaluates wrong. Here is another classic game with 3...Nc6 in the French.
I think several points are worth making here.
1) The mere fact that some idea has been played by a strong player does NOT mean that it is objectively accurate.
Very strong players may play objectively inferior moves for a lot of reasons.
2) The mere fact that a playable position is reached after an alleged inaccuracy does not mean it was not inaccurate.
For example, if I have an opportunity to be better as black because of the way White handled the opening, and I instead choose to transpose to a "normal" opening position, that is definitely inaccurate in some sense.
As has been pointed out, the actual game under discussion is different than the French lines with ...Nc6.
In the original game, black could have played Nf6 to prevent/delay e4, after which White's still ok, of course, but is more or less forced into playing an inferior Veresov.
It's an inferior version because the insertion of Nf3 slows down white's ideas. Black is now in time to meet Bg5 with Be7, after which white will either have to play a delayed e4 with e3 and Bd3, or will have to give up the bishop pair without even inflicting the pawn structure damage he would get in a true Veresov.
The position after 3...Nc6 4.e4 is fully playable for black, sure, but I would certainly prefer to make White play a suboptimal Veresov than what is nearly a mainline French these days.
3) Having said all that, of course SF misses things in general, and especially with this automated analysis which is of necessity somewhat shallow.
If something is classified as inaccurate by the automated analysis, I definitely wouldn't just take it as gospel. It's more an indicator that you probably want to look at this move than it is an outright condemnation.
In this particular case, I would agree with SF that 3...Nc6 in the original game is not the strongest move, but I do suspect that a deeper search would show that the difference between 3...Nc6 and 3...Nf6 is a decent bit less than the 50 centipawns needed to qualify as an "inaccuracy" here on lichess.
1) The mere fact that some idea has been played by a strong player does NOT mean that it is objectively accurate.
Very strong players may play objectively inferior moves for a lot of reasons.
2) The mere fact that a playable position is reached after an alleged inaccuracy does not mean it was not inaccurate.
For example, if I have an opportunity to be better as black because of the way White handled the opening, and I instead choose to transpose to a "normal" opening position, that is definitely inaccurate in some sense.
As has been pointed out, the actual game under discussion is different than the French lines with ...Nc6.
In the original game, black could have played Nf6 to prevent/delay e4, after which White's still ok, of course, but is more or less forced into playing an inferior Veresov.
It's an inferior version because the insertion of Nf3 slows down white's ideas. Black is now in time to meet Bg5 with Be7, after which white will either have to play a delayed e4 with e3 and Bd3, or will have to give up the bishop pair without even inflicting the pawn structure damage he would get in a true Veresov.
The position after 3...Nc6 4.e4 is fully playable for black, sure, but I would certainly prefer to make White play a suboptimal Veresov than what is nearly a mainline French these days.
3) Having said all that, of course SF misses things in general, and especially with this automated analysis which is of necessity somewhat shallow.
If something is classified as inaccurate by the automated analysis, I definitely wouldn't just take it as gospel. It's more an indicator that you probably want to look at this move than it is an outright condemnation.
In this particular case, I would agree with SF that 3...Nc6 in the original game is not the strongest move, but I do suspect that a deeper search would show that the difference between 3...Nc6 and 3...Nf6 is a decent bit less than the 50 centipawns needed to qualify as an "inaccuracy" here on lichess.
@a_pleasant_illusion thanks for saying what I couldn't articulate.
Does anyone know why this game is not classified as a Dutch Defence? I purposely play the Horowitz so that I can go into both the Dutch and the Nimzo-Indian, and I'm wondering why this is still called a Horowitz.
Does anyone know why this game is not classified as a Dutch Defence? I purposely play the Horowitz so that I can go into both the Dutch and the Nimzo-Indian, and I'm wondering why this is still called a Horowitz.
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