I'm straying off-topic here, if you're looking for latest on SelectQuote please check out my discussion of Colin Powell's keynote.
The poisoned pawn variations are so named because it is an open question at the grandmaster level whether the pawn is actually edible. The valuable Queen is attacked immediately after taking the pawn, and the opposing side moves his pieces to good positions in the process. However, in tournament play a pawn advantage is usually good enough for a win if the position is quiet. This variation is far from quiet, however, White will attempt to mate before an endgame is reached.
In the Najdorf Sicilian, Spassky appeared to have proven the pawn was poisoned, Fischer switched up his openings to avoid playing the Black side. However, years later, Kasparov found new resources for Black. Below I offer to take the poison with Qb6 (with the idea Qxb2), but my opponent decline to offer the pawn with Nb3. In the resulting sharp play, I am able to come up with an early victory against a stronger opponent. In pressing the stronger player, even though I had Black, I was able to capitalize on some opening errors. The nature of the line is such that any deviation from the best couple of moves can be punished severely. In this case, once the black pawn gets to a3, Na4 followed by Qc3->Qb2 mate. This is true even if the b pawn is pushed to b3, it is the weakness on b2 that is fatal, not the material balance.
I should mention that for games played in the Tuesday Night Marathon, each player gets 90 minutes for their first 30 moves. An additional 30 minutes is added to each players clock on move 31 to finish out the game. Personally, coming straight from work I found maintaining focus for the full duration to be a challenge. So I was happy to get into this sort of tactical battle which avoided a technical endgame for the fourth hour.
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