The Longest Bishop

-Friends-

The great (?) Henkelman/DeVries chess rivalry keeps getting stronger! Ken and I are playing two games virtually every day. We met at our usual haunt, the coffee area of Barnes and Noble/Waco, last night. Over the last four games, I was 0-2-2 with Ken (two draws with White pieces, two smashmouth losses with the Black pieces/Latvian Gambit - Ken has been playing my Latvian Gambit with -3- Bc4, followed in a very short time by d4 and has crushed me the last couple Latvian games. I had Black in our first game last night, and decided to temporarily abandon the Latvian Gambit, because I had no great confidence that I could escape defeat from Move 1. I decided to go with -1- e4 e5 -2- Nf3 Nc6.

I have played 6000+ (?) chess games, and have played -1- e4 e5 -2- Nf3 Nc6 perhaps three times. It does have one advantage over Latvian Gambit - it doesn't immediately give up a pawn. I did play it once in a tournament game against a 1900 player, and got through the opening in an even position (although I lost because of a blunder in the late middle game). As I expected, my opening moves with this defense were not stellar (I lost a pawn in the opening). However, I won the game with "the longest bishop" (total control of the a8 to h1 diagonal - and my ending position was picturesque and almost unrepeatable ( I rarely get these beautiful positions with a really good player). So I submit this game for your consideration.

WHITE (HENKELMAN) BLACK (DEVRIES)


-1- e4 e5
-2- Nf3 Nc6
-3- Bb5 Nf6

I know nothing about playing the Ruy Lopez as White, and know nothing about defending against Ruy Lopez as Black.

-4- 0-0 Be7
Ken wins a pawn
-5- B x N NP x B
-6- N x P on e5 0-0
-7- d3 Bb7
-8- Nc3 d6
-9- Nc4 Re8
-10- Bg5 Qd7
-11- Re1 QRd8
-12- Qf3 h6
-13- Bh4 Nh7?!

My 13th move looks like a retreat, but it eventually gets my Knight placed on a better square.

-14- B x B R x B
-15- e5 R on d8 to e8
-16- Na5 Ba8

Now my "longest Bishop" has some protection.

-17- d4 Ng5
-18- Qe3 ? c5

Ken's Queen moved away from defense of his King. In the postmortem, we agreed that -18- Qg3 was better for White.

-19- f4 P x P c5 x d4
-20- Q x P at d4 Qg4

Now it is over for White - the Black Queen threat against g2 is supported by the Black Bishop, and Knight check threat is devastating.

-21- Re2 Nf3 check
-22- Resigns