BRIAN WALL's FISHING POLE

I chose to look at one of Brian Wall's games first, even though it isn't the first listed in the book Attacking 101 Volume #002 which I am blogging about as a study project. Brian Wall is famous for his "parlor trick" opening, "The Fishing Pole." Brian is the co-author of How to Play Chess Like an Animal, This game is of particular interest to me because he is playing a club member I've known for many years, Manny Presicci, underrated at 1520 in this game from 2006.

Black has played the fishing pole but instead of taking the bait with h3, White has played Re1, which leads to some devastating results if Black follows up correctly, as Brian Wall of course would.

Here is the game so far:

Manny Presicci (1520) vs Brian Wall (2242)

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Ng4 5. Re1 Bc5 6. d4 Nxd4 7. Nxd4 Qh4 

If White plays 8. Nf3 *

Then

8...Qxf2 9. Kh1

And this allows the smothered mate with the Qg1 sacrifice, followed by Nf2#, whichever legal move White makes.

There are several interesting variations of The Fishing Pole shown. Johnson has covered it thoroughly. It illustrates well a few key concepts I have noticed throughout Attack Formations and his other books. To put it in the Brian Wall's words, rather than my own, 

"The heart of the matter is the relationship between material (I only believe what I see) and bodyguards (pawns surrounding a king are worth roughly a piece) is not well understood or explained...The Fishing Pole is where the visible world collides with the spiritual world in Chess."

He also says patzers scoff  at the idea without thought of consequences...

I have to admit being one of those patzers. But it only happened once. I had been living away in California and hadn't seen Brian in a long time, and when I got back to Colorado it was apparently all the rage, like the Twist dance craze. I did exactly what Joel described. Al Gardner offered me a free knight, ignoring my mighty h3 threat and I shrugged, scoffed, gave it not a second thought and captured it. Woe is me. I never did that again.

I was happy to notice that my friend Francisco Baltier (1550)'s win against Walter Brown (2550) in a simul was presented in this chapter as there is a very entertaining video of the 5 (or is it 6) time US Chess Champion, responding to The Fishing Pole.

ATTACKING GAMES 101

BLOG REVIEW OF VOLUME #002

I am so excited about this new chess book, Attacking Games 101 Volume #002 that instead of a boring old book review, I'm going to turn this into a blog review. I bet that's never been done before. Well maybe it has, but the idea is to go through this book one blog at a time.

Why am I so excited about this book? Because it was written with a chess player of my strength in mind, Not just in the content but in the structure of the text. Johnson annotates move by move the plans he uses to destroy his club player opponents. This is like the enemy sharing his secrets of attack. Most high level players aren't willing to look at the games of peasant club players. But peasant chess players, let's face it, constitute most of us.

As the co-author of Tactics Time, I am a firm believer in the usefulness of studying the games of average players in order to improve your chess, if you are an average club player.That doesn't mean I don't study the games of great players. That is very useful as well. But I learn more from seeing the mistakes and consequences of players like me, for the simple reason that these are going to be the types of mistakes I will most likely encounter at the local chess club, or tournament which is where I play. And I usually play in the U1800 section although I have occasionally peeked over the clouds into the open section, usually as a result of studying books like Attacking 101 by Joel Johnson.

This is just the introductory post, explaining what I will be doing. I will take short segments of the book, not even full chapters, study them, and then blog about what I learned. I mainly do this for selfish reasons. When I try to tell others about what I have learned, it forces me to put it into my own words, and therefore is more likely to stay with me.

So stay tuned and I will post study session 1. soon. Maybe even today.