Parallel Games

In my post Chess960 Short Cuts, I introduced chess960 leagues and team play on Schemingmind.com.

The matches feature two concurrent games between each pair of players, both games using the same start position with colors switched. This should allow some useful comparisons and contrasts about how good players tackle start positions. The current season marks the fifth year for the league.

The first games I looked at were from Chess960 League - Season One (the link only works if you are a member and signed-in, but it's free to a point, like most online play sites these days), between a couple of top-10 players assigned start position SP779 QRKNBRNB. The position after five moves in both games is shown in the diagram. The first game started 1.f4 g6 2.g3 d6 3.e4 Nc6 4.Nf3 e5 5.fxe5 Nxe5, the second 1.d3 g6 2.Bc3 Bxc3 3.Nxc3 d6 4.g3 Bc6 5.e4 e5.

Although the two games have followed different paths, there are a number of similarities. Both players in both games have quickly activated the Bishop in the corner by pushing the g-Pawn to the third rank, and both have taken a stake in the center by pushing the e-Pawn two squares. It also looks probable that both White and Black will castle O-O-O in both games, which is what happened.

The problem piece is the Queen. There is no obvious way for it to get into the game, so I looked a little further to see how the players developed it. In both games, Black played ...a6 and brought the Queen into play via a7. White did similar in the second game, although a2-a4 was played instead of pushing the Pawn a single square. In the first game, White followed a different plan: d2-d3, Be1-c3, and b2-b3.

White won both games, but it would take a more detailed analysis to determine why. Here are the PGN scores of both games, courtesy of SchemingMind.com.

[Event "Chess960: Chess960 League"]
[Site "SchemingMind.com"]
[Date "2005.07.31"]
[Round "-"]
[White "dmichael"]
[Black "Chess Tiger"]
[Result "1-0"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "qrknbrnb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/QRKNBRNB w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.f4 g6 2.g3 d6 3.e4 Nc6 4.Nf3 e5 5.fxe5 Nxe5 6.d3 Bd7 7.Nxe5 Bxe5 8.Bg2 O-O-O 9.Bc3 a6 10.b3 Bxc3 11.Qxc3 Qa7 12.Nb2 Qe3+ 13.Qd2 Qc5 14.O-O-O f5 15.d4 Qa7 16.exf5 Bxf5 17.Nc4 Nf6 18.Ne3 Be6 19.Qa5 h6 20.Qc3 Rf7 21.Qd3 Rg8 22.Rf2 Nd7 23.Rxf7 Bxf7 24.Bh3 1-0

[Event "Chess960: Chess960 League"]
[Site "SchemingMind.com"]
[Date "2005.08.01"]
[Round "-"]
[White "Chess Tiger"]
[Black "dmichael"]
[Result "1-0"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "qrknbrnb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/QRKNBRNB w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.d3 g6 2.Bc3 Bxc3 3.Nxc3 d6 4.g3 Bc6 5.e4 e5 6.O-O-O Ne6 7.f4 O-O-O 8.Nge2 Nh6 9.h3 a6 10.f5 gxf5 11.exf5 Nd4 12.Bxc6 Nxc6 13.Nd5 f6 14. a4 Ng8 15.Qa2 Qa7 16.Qc4 Nge7 17.Nec3 Nxd5 18.Nxd5 Qd4 19.Rf4 Qxc4 20. Rxc4 h5 21.Rg1 Rf7 22.c3 Rh8 23.Kd2 Kd7 24.a5 Rc8 25.Rh4 Nxa5 26.Rxh5 Rcf8 27.h4 Nc6 28.g4 Ne7 29.Nxe7 Kxe7 30.Rh6 Rg7 31.Ke3 Rff7 32.Rg6 Rh7 33.h5 Rf8 34.Kf3 1-0

For each game, was the seed of victory in the diagrammed position or was it introduced later?