Krush-Yip, Part One

Two champions, past and present, create a masterpiece.

This blog was born in the days following the Candidate’s tournament in April. The epic struggle in the final round between Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi left me waxing poetic:

Some say that chess is a science; if it is, this game is an exploration to the bottom of the darkest ocean. Others say that chess is a sport, and if you want to scoff at the idea that two people sitting at a table are engaged in a sporting activity, it’s worth watching the way that Nepo physically collapses at the end of the game, after the draw is agreed, his body a representation of the effort it took him to defend an impossibly bad position and his cruel reward: missing out on a World Championship rematch by half a point. In my eyes, this game represents chess best as a work of art, composed by two actors constantly improvising, creating a masterpiece through the interplay of their ferocious talents.

The chess gods gave us another transcendent performance this week, a long and difficult struggle between Carissa Yip, the reigning champ, the present and future of American women’s chess, and Irina Krush, whose eight championships are unsurpassed in my lifetime. It’s a matchup between the two players for whom only tournament victory would constitute a success, and both rose to the occasion: if you haven’t seen the game yet, I think you’ll enjoy it.

I didn’t watch the round live, so it took me a while to appreciate what I was seeing when I went over the games in the evening. I originally intended to examine a couple of key positions in a grab-bag style post similar to what I wrote about the first half of the Olympiad. Then I realized that this game was too rich and strange for anything other than its own post. Then I started analyzing in earnest, and when I tried to write up what I’d found, I realized that I couldn’t do it justice without breaking it into parts. So here you go, the first of three installments about this fascinating game:

1 c4 g6 2 Nc3 Bg7 3 d4 c5 4 d5 Bxc3+ 5 bxc3:

Let the weirdness commence: here comes the Dzindzi-Indian, an oddball opening that I was unreasonably terrified of as a young player. In my youth, when I played 1 d4, I only wanted to play conventional, strategic chess and win comfortably in the endgame. There’s nothing comfortable about the Dzindzi-Indian. It’s one of those variations where it feels like both sides stand worse. White has to play very actively if she’s going to open the position, whereas black has to navigate a space deficit and potential dark-squared weaknesses.

Yip steered further into uncharted waters with her next move, 5 … e5. The Dzindzi-Indian normally continues with the more ambitious and strategically risky 5 … f5. White does not lack for aggressive tries: 6 e4 fxe4 7 f3 as in the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, 6 g4 fxg4 7 h3, a typical wing gambit against the Dutch, or my personal favorite, 6 h4 Nf6 7 h5 Nxh5 8 Rxh5 gxh5 9 e4, with wild complications. Yip’s move leads to positions analogous to the Czech Benoni, but with a couple important differences. In black’s favor is the early trade of the dark squared bishop and the disruption of white’s queenside structure; in white’s favor is her lead in development and the future potential of her dark squared bishop (a piece black often manages to exchange in the Czech Benoni proper by playing Be7-g5).

The game continued 6 e4 d6 7 Bd3 Nd7, and it’s clear that we’re in for a game of slow maneuvers behind a carapace of pawns. Black isn’t trying to win as much as she’s trying to frustrate white by gumming up the works and slowing down the game. It’s the chess version of the zone defense: cut out anything flashy, confuse the other side, and wait for a mistake.

My general approach in these kinds of positions is to try to open things up before the defense is set¹—I found myself wondering if white could play f4 here or on many of her subsequent moves. Here’s an instructive example, from a game played between Harsha and Pantsulaia in 2023: 8 f4 Qf6 9 Ne2 Qh4+ 10 g3 Qe7 (having probed for weaknesses, the queen returns home) 11 00 h5 12 f5 gxf5 13 exf5 f6?

Believe it or not, black is already lost. The problem is that after 14 Re1! (in the game white played 14 Kh1? instead), the double pin on the e-file means that there’s no way to prevent Nf4-e6. It’s a nice example of how putting rapid pressure on black’s plans can pay off quickly.

Rather than committing herself to an early f4 break, Krush continued developing normally: 8 Ne2 Qe7 9 00 h5 10 a4, the first move that’s not in my database:

This brings us to one of the more difficult judgment calls in chess: how to respond when your opponent advances her rook-pawn? Do you push your own rook pawn one square or two squares or simply ignore it? In this case it feels like the a-pawn thrust isn’t too dangerous: Krush cannot open up the queenside without help, so why did Yip play 10 … a5 in response, giving away the b5-square?

I think that the answer is that there aren’t many ways for black to win from this kind of position: it’s not happening in the center, and it’s unlikely that black will generate a powerful attack on the kingside unless white takes too many risks. Fixing the white pawn on a4 leaves a permanent target that could prove to be the difference in the endgame if white overplays her hand.

But we’re miles away from any ending, promising for black or otherwise, and the players continued to slowly improve their positions: 11 Rb1 Kd8. Black’s not castling, so c7 seems like a good place to tuck the king away, but I don’t love the timing of this idea: I would prefer 11 … h4 with g5 to follow, locking up the kingside as much as possible.

The point is that white has only one pawn break in this position, and now seems like a good time to play it: 12 f4, and if black is a little careless, the position can get bad in a hurry: 12 … exf4 (perhaps too risky) 13 Bxf4 g5 14 Bc1 Ne5 15 Nd4! the point being that accepting the sacrifice, 15 … cxd4? 16 cxd4, is a disaster:

The doubled pawns are a force in the center, compensation for the sacrificed piece and more. But none of this is forced, and Krush preferred a quieter buildup: 12 Be3 Kc7 13 Rb5 h4 14 Qd2 Ra6 (white is preparing to triple on the b-file; black is getting ready to defend by overprotecting b6) 15 Qb2:

There are many strategic reasons to give one’s opponent doubled-pawns. The most obvious are to weaken the pawns themselves or to expose something (usually the king) that the pawns were protecting. An underrated problem with doubled-pawns is that they can restrict the kinds of plans available to a player in the middlegame. In this case the pair of c-pawns means that although white has the open b-file she has no pawn breaks on the queenside; now her kingside break, f2-f4, is about to disappear. Without pawn breaks it’s hard to develop a plan beyond shuffling the pieces on the back three ranks.

This is a long way of saying that I don’t like white’s last move. If 15 f4 isn’t appealing white can always improve her position some other way that keeps the queen on the c1-h6 diagonal so that black can’t lock everything up. But now, after 15 … g5!, it was too late.

With her kingside play stymied, Krush continued to pile up pressure on the queenside to see if the black position could be cracked: 16 Rb1 b6 17 f3 f6 18 Nc1 Qg7 19 Nb3 Ne7:

Is there a sacrifice here? The c5 square is too well protected, but 20 Nxa5 is at least plausible: 20 … bxa5! (20 … Rxa5?! 21 Rxa5 bxa5 22 Qb5 picks up the a-pawn and black pieces aren’t easily able to swing back over to the queenside to help) 21 Rb7+! Kd8 22 Qb5 Ra8! 23 Rb6 Nxb6 24 Qxb6+:

The problem is that black has at least a draw, since 24 … Kd7 leaves white with nothing better than 25 Qb5+. She could also play for more with 24 … Ke8; the center is falling, but she is up a rook.

There is, of course, another point to the Nc1-b3 idea, which is to keep maneuvering the knight until it finds a better home. Krush carried out this plan; without pawn breaks she had little else to do. 20 Be2 Kd8 21 Bf2 Ng6 22 Nd2 Kc7 23 Nf1 Ne7 24 Ne3 Qh7 25 Kf1:

This brings us to the end of the first phase of the game, and a stodgy affair it has been thus far—it’s a little hard to believe that anything exciting is going to come of this position. Krush’s last move, Kf1, is an admission that white cannot make further progress without opening the position. The only place to do this is on the kingside, so her plan is to bring her king to a3, regroup her heavy pieces efficiently, and then play g3 and f4 to open some lines² before black has a chance to bring her poorly placed Ra6 and Bc8 into the game.

Yip has a choice to make: she can continue moving idly back and forth, in essence arguing that Krush’s plan is not particularly dangerous, or she can try to break open the kingside herself while her opponent’s king is poorly placed: a mirror image of Krush’s choice whether or not to play f4 between moves 8-15.

We’ll pick up the game here next time, it’s about to get much more interesting.

1. A tactic that’s also useful against the zone defense in sports.

2. This explains why Krush has avoided the natural looking move h3: it’s going to be hard enough to open the position even with the option of recapturing on g3 with the h-pawn.