B-Wing Fighter
You arrive at the board.
You shake your opponent’s hand.
You see 1 e4.
You want to win.
You reply 1…c5.
At some point, your opponent pushes his b-pawn to b4.
You laugh in disbelief. You dismiss it as a serious move. You grab the pawn.
You lose the game.
You go to your hotel room and smash the furniture.
Every Sicilian player has experienced something similar. We hate wing gambits. Despite having a bad score against them, we don’t really want to admit they might be a serious option.
Fortunately, game 5 of the Carlsen – Caruana World Chess Championship might be the rescue we needed. On move 6, Caruana advanced his b-pawn and proved such a move can be dangerous even at the top level. It also indicated his strong will to win. If I were fond of terrible references, I’d write that he can be regarded as the B-wing fighter.
(If you didn’t get that reference, I REALLY don’t know what you are doing on a CHESS blog 🙁 )
Thank god I am not like that.
Round 5 report follows.
Game course
For the third time in three games, Caruana opened with the king’s pawn. However, in contrast to the previous games, he didn’t take on c6 but continued developing normally. Carlsen chose the sharp 5…e5 reply, inhibiting White’s central advance. This is when Caruana decided to push „Barry the b-pawn“ (Okay, okay, I promise this is the last one).
Carlsen decided to take with the knight, but very soon had his first long(er) think. Caruana was playing instantly and the commentators thought Carlsen might be in trouble. As it turned out, he knew the line perfectly. Whether he was thinking because he didn’t revise it before the game, or simply to confuse Caruana is not clear.
In any case, by move 17 the dust has settled and Carlsen has equalized. Then he decided to give up a pawn, for which he got a very serious compensation. However, at the critical moment, on move 20, he decided against advancing his b-pawn because of a „simple“ variation that didn’t really work for Caruana.
After this missed opportunity, Fabiano found a solid defensive construction (Bd2-Be3 idea). After the more-or-less forced play by both sides, things fizzled out to a dead-drawn endgame. On move 36, the players decided to call it a day.
Game analysis
The aftermath?
The chess community agrees this was yet another „wasted“ White game by Caruana. The tension of the match is slightly reaching its peak. As you might remember, we predicted Caruana’s chances would increase toward the middle of the match and then decrease toward the end (tiebreak, etc). The time is running short. Also, now he faces a serious challenge – two Black games in a row.
(At the moment of writing, Caruana seems to be doing fine in game 6, though)