Prospect v. Barrington (3): Opening Moves I Hate

Two of Prospect's three victories came from the Zwolenik brothers, Mike on 5th Board against Zach Youman and Max on 8th Board against Cory Hunter. Both Zwoleniks have demonstrated potential on some occassions and sloppiness on others, but they both came up with some accurate moves in complex positions to win their games.

While I hate to pour salt in a player's wounds after a loss, I love to jump on a player's mistakes after he wins, and each of the Zwoleniks played an opening move that made me cringe. In Max's case it was putting a bishop in front of an unmoved central pawn with 4.Qd3 .

There are several reasons I hate this move: (1) blocking the d-pawn immobilizes it and stops it from exerting control of the center or performing any other useful function; (2) blocking the d-pawn makes it harder to develop the other bishop; and (3) the bishop is wasted because it is performing the function of a pawn. Not surprisingly, you will rarely see a bishop developed this way in games between strong players.

In Mike's case, the hated move was placing the queen in front of an undeveloped bishop with 5...Qe7.

The reason I hate this move is that it delays the development of the bishop and delays castling. It rarely yields benefits commensurate with the loss of development, however, there are in fact a few opening in which you will see this move played at the top level. Most of them involve situations where the opponent suffers a loss of development because he is forced to play the same move to deal with threats on the e-file. One such case occurs in the Petrov defense after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 2.Nxe5 Nxe4?! 3.Qe2. Black is now forced to play 3...Qe7 because he will lose his queen after 3...Nf6?? 4.Nd6+.