Maurits van der Meer

Maybe Nc4-Nb6 to pressure d7?

Just eat everything, no? Don’t touch your pawns?

Rule 1 seems to supersede all the others 😂🤣

Interesting! This may well be a better idea than moving our pawns. Thanks for the suggestion 😄

I thought like this too - maybe we have to start with h5 to prevent g5. If …f5 we can still play g4 and bring our king.

Bd3 Rxd3 Rg1 Kxg1 Rb1 and mate soon

I have no idea whether it's good, but I think Qc2 is the most natural move - the queen often goes to c2 in the Catalan to support the e4 push at some point.

I should add that Alvar Alonso has a video on his youtube where he starts with the Catalan and then sacs pieces to attack the opponent's king. So if you're good enough it doesn't matter 😅

I think your instinct is to "go for the throat" - at least, in all the games you ever post of yourself 😉

The Catalan isn't really a "go for the throat" opening, so there may just be a style mismatch.

Any winning attempt probably has to start with 1…h2. White can take our bishop but then we queen and they don’t 😅

Thank you 😄

I win in tiebreaks. It was tough 😅

Qa1 Kg2 Ne1 and mate soon after 😅

♟️QGD JUNGLES (PART 1)♟️

Kicking off a mini-series on building a strategic White repertoire against QGD:
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 0-0 6.e3

Today’s focus: the main line 6...h6, against which I recommend the rare 7.Bxf6!?(D)

Let’s dive in! 🧵👇

#chess #chesspunks #Day172

That does look interesting! I played d5 instead, a thematic break in the center.

T-shirt gekregen toen ik daar op bezoek was 😅

Dank je, Dennis! 😄

♟️TAME THE KALASHNIKOV♟️

Don't want to learn the mainline theory against the Kalashnikov Sicilian?

Try this underrated sideline with little theory and clear positional goals:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e5 5.Nb3!?(D)

Let’s break it down! 🧵👇

#chess #chesspunks #Day169

I won't paste the blitz tiebreaker, but after being in complete control, the game got tense when we both ran out of time. Luckily, my opponent flagged when I still had 3 seconds on the clock 😅😅😅

Here is the full game. As you can see, it ended in a draw - I was quite happy with that as I felt I was losing at some point in the middle. But since this was the final, a blitz tiebreak had to be played. Obviously, I immediately offered to share the cup, but they refused...

A little bit later, I was able to trade some pieces. Can we defend this position?

White is creating more threats - both against my pawns and against my king. What to do?

And once again, the white pieces have improved and the black pieces look terrible. Is there any hope left? What would you play?

The white pieces are becoming more active and I'm not sure that black's positions makes sense right now. Here I was starting to get nervous that I was losing control... What would you play?

Now, white's rook is suddenly quite active. Here I felt that I was starting to get into trouble. What should we do?

I tried to generate some play on the kingside, but it appears that White has shut that down. What do we do now?

Once again, white is offering a trade. What do we play?

A bit later, white is offering a trade of knights. Do we accept?

White is threatening our knight, and also to ruin the pawns in front of our king when we move the knight. What to play?

The queens have just been traded. What would you do here?