Faustino Oro Teaches Chess!

The news of the Argentinian prodigy Faustino Oro becoming the youngest IM ever at the tender age of 10 made headlines worldwide. Faustino plays an attractive, aggressive kind of chess, and those of you who want to get better can learn a lot from him.

Many players who have just started their chess journey find it difficult and not very interesting to analyze games of the top players like GM Magnus Carlsen because most of the moves there are way too difficult to understand. I addressed this issue in an old article, explaining that many Carlsen are unsuitable for less experienced players. Fortunately, this is not the case with the games of young Faustino. Let's take a look at one of his latest games and see what we can learn from it:

This is the first very instructive moment of the game. Black just attacked White central d4-pawn by playing 13...Qb6 and it looks like White just ignored it. Can't Black simply capture it now?

Yes, it is indeed a trap! Most players learn this trap from the Advance variation of the French Defense:

You might think this is a trap only beginners would fall into. Here is a story told by GM Mikhail Tal in the book of his selected games, In The Fire Attack. There was a famous Candidates Tournament in Bled in 1959. As you know, Tal won the tournament to qualify for the world championship match vs. Botvinnik, and later, by winning that match, he became the youngest chess world champion in history. On a rest day of the tournament, the participants and their coaches played a blitz tournament. Tal doesn't remember the exact position he had in the game vs. GM Yuri Averbakh, but the most relevant part of the position looked like this:

Tal was playing Black, and it was his move. Averbakh offered a draw, but Tal rejected it. He saw that White was threatening to play Bxh7, winning his queen on d5, so he decided to defend against this threat and played h7-h6. Of course, Averbakh played Bh7+ anyway and never offered a draw again in this game!

Let's get back to Faustino's game.

As you can see, GM Asis Hipolito defended against the threat of Bh7+ better than Tal and played 14...Kh8. Now the d4-pawn is indeed in danger, so White played 15.Be2 to protect it. So. let's proceed:

As you can see, both opponents grabbed open files with their rooks, so basically, they are doing the same thing. But as Publilius Syrus famously said: "When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all." Indeed, look at the open c-file. Yes, Black's rooks are doubled there, but White's knight on c3 safely closes the gate. Meanwhile, White's doubled rooks are waiting to invade into Black's position jumping to e8! Black tried to kick the c3-knight by playing 26...b4, but it backfired:

Notice the combination that White started with 29.Nxd5! It is a classic back-rank checkmate combination, which we discussed in this article. Black managed to avoid a checkmate, but it cost him a pawn and ruined his kingside position. The back-rank pattern is the first kind of chess combination that I learned as a kid. It is a must-know for any real chess player!

Next instructive moment happened when Faustino played 41.g4!

Isn't pushing pawns in front of your king a cardinal sin of chess? Yes, in most cases, pushing pawns in front of your King after you castled makes your king very vulnerable, as can be seen in the following classical game:

But in certain cases, such a pawn push is justified. Usually, it happens when you start a pawn storm on your opponent's castle, and your pieces are way better prepared to take advantage of the files that will open up as a result of such a pawn storm. The situation on the kingside that happened in the following game of Alexander Alekhine resembles to some extent the position from Faustino's game:

Notice how Alekhine opened the g-file with his move 30.g4! and used it to completely demolish his opponent's kingside.

The last instructive moment of Faustino's game happened in this position:

After Faustino squeezed everything he could from the open e- and g-files, he found a new open file to infiltrate into his opponent's position. This invasion quickly decided the game!

There are many lessons for an aspiring chess player to learn from this game. But if you can remember just one of them, it should be the importance of open files. They are the roads that lead to your opponent's position. Therefore, grab the files that you can use, as Faustino did first with the e-file, then the g-file, and finally the c-file. Meanwhile, make sure you don't let your opponent take advantage of their open files—as Faustino's opponent, who couldn't take advantage of the c-file!