Always Play f3

You might think this post is about the long-term benefits of blundering and how you can learn from them— how blundering causes you to fix misevaluation issues within your own game and become a better player. While I agree, this is not that. I might even argue this is the opposite. When I look at a game and find a blunder, I try to look for reasons why and learn to recognize them. When those reasons don't exist, I make a blind assumption that the move is bad. Today I want to talk about one such move: pawn to f3. Regarded by many as the cardinal sin of opening chess, all beginner coaches tell their students that f3 is a bad move and to never play it. It opens too many diagonals; it weakens the kingside pawn structure. After all, look at the Damiano Defense: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6, and Black is already lost to Nxe5! Message me if you think you find a refutation for Black.

Anyways, the point is that f3 being bad has been drilled into my brain for years, and today I want to explain why I played it on move 6. It started 1. e4 e6 2. d4 b6 3. c4 Bb7 4. Nc3 Nf6 5. Bd3 Bb4.

At first glance, White has a big space advantage, but this is clearly the type of position my opponent likes to play. They give their opponent the center in the beginning for piece development, usually on the long diagonals. They then chip away at the center over time. In this position, Black is putting a lot of pressure on the e4 pawn. This was the first sense of discomfort in this position. I can't defend it without moving my queen (and I really didn't want to move my queen for various reasons); if I push it, my rook on h1 hangs, and if I let go of the pawn, I lose my space advantage, leaving me behind in development and material and about equal (or worse) in space after d5. In this position, I had a few thoughts:

In the continuation, my pawn on d4 will become immovable and will no longer be defended by a pawn. I saw that the g1 knight finds a good spot on e2, defending my king, the other knight, and the d4 pawn. I also saw that the c1 bishop finds a nice spot on e3, again defending the d4 pawn. After d5 from Black, I can play cxd5 and e5 with plans of f4 and g4, Rg1 followed by a decisive attack.

So I did it. I touched the boat. I played f3, maintained a strong center, pushed my pawns on the kingside, shifted my pieces over, and started an attack which led to this position. Do you see the move?