World Chess Championship 1966 - Key Decisive game - Round 20

Hi all

Continuing my coverage of the 1966 World chess championship we look at game 20 in this particular blog post.

Video annotation

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

A Nimzo Indian Defence

Black volunteers the dark square bishop to damage White's pawn structure.

White's position looks solid in the start of the middlegame

c4 - bit of a "trappy move" - does weaken black a bit on the dark squares

Very comfortable looking position for White

a5 break seems logical

b6 focus

Natural looking move but seems to be a mistake - Rc2

A desperate looking tactical shot

Can Petrosian survive this attack?

Who is attacking who?

Final position

Key Takeaway points

• The Nimzo-Indian defence creates interesting imbalances in position - structure vs bishop pair
• Petrosian seemed to have a pleasant enough position but it seems he won the pawn a the wrong moment on b6
• Spassky played one inaccurate move and was forced into an unsound desperate attack
• Petrosian made sure the attack didn't do anything

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Cheers, K