I'm interested in the Torre as black also, and so I thought I'd revive this thread, even though I arise at things via a different move order.
I usually just play a solid set-up:
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 d5 4.e3 c5 5.Nbd2 Be7 6.c3 Nbd7 7.Bd3 0-0 or something similar. In a recent game of mine, White continued with
8.Qc2 c4 9.Be2 b5 10.Ne5 Nxe5 11.dxe5 Nd7 12.Bxe7 Qxe7 13.f4 f6 and was already worse (with 13...Qc5 as a likely improvement for Black).
White's 8th seems like a significant error and after the correct
8.Ne5 Nxe5 9.dxe5 Nd7 Bf4 I am not sure that I am such a fan of Black's position, which invites the kingside attack.
Probably Black should improve his move-order and delay castling:
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 d5 4.e3 c5 5.Nbd2 Be7 6.c3 Nbd7 7.Bd3 b6 8.0-0 Bb7 9.Ne5 Nxe5 10.dxe5 Nd7 11.Bxe7 [ 11.Bf4 g5 seems rather pleasant for Black -- in the spirit of the oft-cited Spassky-Petrosian 1966 game which continued 11...Qc7 12.Nf3 h6 13.b4 g5]
11...Qxe7 12.f4 and now 12...f6 seems a little ugly after 13.Qh5+, and although 12...g5 seems worthy of a closer investigation the main line looks like
12...0-0-0 13.Nf3 f6 and after NCO's suggestion of
14.Bb5 I am inclined to agree with its assessment of a slight advantage to White.
So my first question is whether this should be viewed as an acceptable for Black -- and if so, how should Black continue (or deviate earlier).
A subtle point is that I'd like to be playing 3...c5 first, which seems like it would be Black's more precise move order (preventing White from changing gears and playing 4.c4 with a standard QGD -- though I guess it's unlikely a Torre player would prefer to push the game in that direction) except that 4.Nc3 pushing things toward a Van Geet seems to pose some problems for Black that I haven't resolved yet. (4.e4 is another option for White, but the main threat of e5 doesn't seem all that strong.) I don't imagine that there is a way to get play similar to the first line without allowing transposition to the QGD?
Finally: ignoring everything above(!), what do people think Black's best approach to the Torre would be? The lines with 3...h6 intending a quick d6 and g5 against 4.Bh4 seem like a pretty aggressive and compelling choice. In the other Torre thread
http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1113287210/, rooksaway18 noted that this particular choice is not very robust in that after
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.c3 Black needs to play something else, but I'd rather ignore this potential difficulty for the moment (or at least, use that thread to address it). This is, however, in the back of my mind, as the first line has the advantage that it can be played against basically any move order of White.
As a practical matter, usually my opponents playing the Torre are somewhat weaker, and so my results are quite good even without my doing anything fancy, and so I am less inclined to play lines which involve excessive risk (i.e., don't expect me to be excited about any lines with Qb6xb2).
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Can i defeat a TORRE player with ... (Read 10861 times)
