Philidor Defense (16), advanced pawn

Today’s blog entry is from round 2 of my chess club’s weekly tournament. White opened with e4 and I defended with my favorite Philidor Hanham. On White’s 5th move he advanced the d4-pawn which created a weakness within his central pawns. The next several moves had Black advancing his Q-side while threatening the d-pawn.

On move 21, White thought that a K-side attack was possible and more interesting than the Q-side/center positioning battle. Houdini calculates that it was more advantageous to immediately take the attacking Bishop, but my analysis was lengthy and the result still murky and I settled for a safe Rook move ... seeing that White could not make headway in his attack. When White pursued his attack, I gained significant material, then proceeded to remove all his attacking options, and got a resignation.