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Maxime Vachier Lagrave playing komodo with handicap given[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Sat, Sep 8, 2018 08:40 AM UTC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exgVvSauvhQ

I noticed this video on YouTube (which some probably already know).

It contained well known GM Maxime Vachier Lagrave playing Chess.com's AI level 16-20 mostly in preparation for 6 odds games with increasing advantage for MVL against Komodo. A nice one was the final one where MVL got black and played without his knights where Komodo got the white pieces and 7 knights on the back rank on the regular non-king squares instead of the regular pieces.

I remember HG Muller saying something a while ago about minor pieces unorthodoxly defending each other in such cases. This is a good example of that. Many times you just cannot dislodge knight chains as many times a knight is protected by two other.

I was also thinking about an more extreme version of that where black has the usual setup, and white has besides the back rank knights 3 more knights replacing the pawns on a2,b2 and h2. This is probably better for black than the previous setup as now black flanking pawns could prove troublesome despite the material balance being  the same (-4 point with the classic piece evaluations).

Any thoughts?


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