Breyer's Brilliant Ideas

One of the most famous quotes of Kozma Prutkov states: "Throwing pebbles into the water, look at the ripples they form on the surface. Otherwise this activity will be an empty amusement." While it is obviously a humorous phrase, similar to Yogi Berra's "You can observe a lot by just watching," aspiring chess players should take a note.

In my old article, we discussed a very common situation where people watch great games played by outstanding players only to forget everything the very next day. Today we are going to analyze one of the most brilliant games ever played and see how we can use this knowledge in our games. 

It is just six moves into the game and Breyer already introduces a very unusual idea for the Semi-Slav Defense. Well, Gyula Breyer was well known for his original ideas. A good example is an opening line named after him:

The move 6.f4!? played by Breyer in our main game shouldn't surprise our readers since we discussed this exact concept in a recent article. Yes, White prepares a fantastic e5 outpost for his king's knight.

Whenever you see an interesting idea, you should always ask yourself: "how could this help me in my own games?" Many years ago, I thought that this game gave me a very powerful weapon against the Semi Slav Defense, which is a very popular opening. I even tried it in one of my games, but my opponent deviated, then something went wrong and my knight never got to e5 in the opening. As Jack Nicholson famously said, "At least I tried!"

Now back to Breyer's game.

Here is another brilliant idea which I was never able to use in my games. White doesn't want to waste a tempo on re-capturing the c4 pawn and move his bishop away from the key diagonal b1-h7. My guess is you have to be a true genius to use this idea in your game. Here is how the "Magician" did it:

Now I offer you a little quiz. It should be a piece of cake for those of you who read my last article.

Of course Breyer didn't miss an opportunity to get some help from the "chess demon!"

Now use all your creativity to find the following attacking move played by Breyer. This is unquestionably the most brilliant move of the whole game! Count how many attempts it took for you to guess it correctly and share the number in the comments. 

Let's compare the results:

1 attempt - Congratulations, you know classical games quite well!

2-5 attempts - Not only are you a very strong player, you are probably a genius too!

5-10 attempts - not bad at all!

43+ attempts - check our lessons how to move the pieces.

The idea of the mysterious move can be seen later in the game:

The idea to move the king in order to eliminate opponent's saving checks is not as unusual as you might think. Here is another example from a classical game:

It is the same idea used by GM Garry Kasparov a very important win in the following world championship game:

The same prophylactic move Kh2, which prepared a decisive attack, helped me to win the World Open:

Here is another quiz for you. Find how Breyer could finish his brilliant game instantly:

Instead, White made an inexplicable mistake and won the game only because of horrible defense from his opponent:

It is amazing how much we can learn from this game. I am sure you, my dear readers, will be able to use some of these ideas in your games!