[Event "Coherency's Study: Gefenas - Mickus"] [Site "https://lichess.org/study/NFvVmFzq/SnNxMl8c"] [Date "2025.04.28"] [Result "*"] [Variant "Standard"] [Annotator "https://lichess.org/@/C0herency"] [ECO "C54"] [Opening "Italian Game: Classical Variation, Center Attack"] [StudyName "benkonian's Study"] [ChapterName "Coherency's Study: Gefenas - Mickus"] [ChapterURL "https://lichess.org/study/cHly9CK3/k5YNRVWw"] [UTCDate "2025.04.28"] [UTCTime "09:15:55"] [Orientation "white"] { This was a game by a student of mine playing the white pieces. His strength would have been around 1700 at the time and he's a big fan of openings. In this game, his biggest strength has backstabbed him } 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. b4 { The so-called Dubov italian, which became famous after Dubov beat Karjakin with it in a great tactical game. The romantic nature of the variation has attracted a lot of attention from the club player community, some courses were also made. Surprisingly, the 1800 or so rated opponent found most of the right moves OTB, while the student was blitzing everything out } 6... Bb6 7. e5 d5 8. exf6 dxc4 9. Qe2+ Be6 10. b5 d3 11. Qe4 Nb4 { [%cal Ge1h1,Gf6g7] } 12. fxg7?? (12. O-O { This was the point that white had "prepared", though of course the move orders were switched up. In the game, white's king was left in the center, which should be understood as a bad thing. Now black has a lot of moves which give him an equal position according to the engine, which also makes it difficult to understand such an opening. If we're going for prepared wild complications with white, let's at least let our opponent find only moves to survive } 12... Nc2 13. fxg7 Rg8 14. Bg5 Qd5 15. Qxh7 Kd7 16. Nbd2 { I guess this could be considered the main line. Black continues Bf5 or Qf5 and the complications continue. I'm not sure we should strive for such positions in general. It is rather chaotic and there's no chance of us actually navigating them very accurately, I believe grandmasters would have a hard time making sense of what's going on here. The position is also very specific to this Dubov italian line and most of the patterns and ideas here will not be applicable to, say, other Italians like the Guicco Pianno, making it less of an instructive variation as well. }) 12... Nc2+ { and white is lost. How did this happen? To start with, the player was using his memory and not his abilities of playing chess. We have all been there - "is this the move?", "is this the move in that other variation?", "I think the right move is this..". This type of thinking is very dangerous and leads to blunders such as this one. My advice for situations where we think we still know the move by heart but we are not sure - forget everything you know and think from scratch. This way we are not relying on the lottery which is our memory - as humans, we tend to forget, so let's just figure it out at the board } 13. Kd1 Rg8 14. Ng5 (14. Bg5 Qd5 15. Qxh7 Kd7 16. Nbd2 { Clearly the king doesn't belong on d1. The rest of the game isn't interesting }) 14... Qd5 { [%csl Gh1][%cal Gc2a1] } 15. Qxh7 Kd7 16. f3 Be3 17. Ne4 Qe5 18. Bxe3 Nxe3+ 19. Ke1 { [%csl Gg3][%cal Gg7g2,Gg2e2] } 19... Nc2+ 20. Kf2 Rxg7 21. Qh6 Rg6 22. Qd2 Rag8 23. g3 f5 24. Rd1 Nxa1 25. Re1 Nc2 26. f4 Qd5 27. Rd1 *