Tuesday, May 23, 2017

A Stunning Sacrificial Attack by Horowitz

     A couple of years ago I did a post on the book Point Count Chess by Horowitz and Mott-Smith and today wanted to look at a game that appeared in the book. I mentioned in the previous post that I had doubts Reshevsky really wrote the forward. Reshevsky claimed he wrote all his books, but rumor has it they were ghosted, mostly by Fred Reinfeld. National Master James Schroeder told of one incident where he questioned Reshevsky about something he (Reshevsky) had written in one of his books and Schroeder said Reshevsky had no idea what he was talking about. The incident lead Schroeder to believe Reshevsky had never even seen the book. But I am getting off the subject. 
     The big question is will this system work. I think it's probably on a par with the piece value beginners learn where, for example, a Queen is worth nine points and a Rook is worth five. They may know that if they have a Q vs. a R they have a four point advantage, but do they know how to take advantage of it in order to win? As I stated in the earlier post, by calling your attention to the different positional factors it will help you recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the position and so the system has some value. 
     In the following game we'll take a look at Horowitz' game against a master from the 1930s to the 1950s. Horowitz gives some pretty flimsy notes as they relate to applying the point count system, but what I really enjoyed was Horowitz' brilliant tactical play after Martin played 23...Kg7. 
 

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