A French Exchange

Jumped onto FICS this morning, and started playing a relatively innocuous game. And yes, folks, it's another French Exchange variation! :)



In all fairness, it appears my opponent didn't know what to do after the pawn exchange. He wasted far too many moves and didn't develop his pieces properly while I slowly build up and went for his throat.

I am also happy to report that I've beaten my brother-in-law Steven on Monday night (woohoo! this event is so rarely seen that it is akin to ... errrm... errrm... having Harrison Ford star in an Indiana Jones movie - see pix on right)

He played a 1.d4 opening and we quickly moved into King's Indian Defence territory and he tried a Minority Attack ala Bayonet Attack on the Queenside which amounted to nothing (I actually have no knowledge of how to effectively handle the Bayonet Attack in the KID well - I definitely need to reinvestigate this line).

Despite his best attempts to break my kingside, with 2 bishops, a Knight, a Rook, a Queen and a White pawn on h6 (My king was tucked away safely on h7 hiding behind his h-pawn in all irony), his attack floundered when I managed to force him to trade all of his attacking pieces.

It was only after the smoke had cleared that he realised he had a slight problem. In the ensuing B v B endgame, we had light-squared bishops and all his pawns were stuck on light squares and all of mine were on dark squares. He resigned a few moves later.