Very true. I hope Shebakov reads this. I renewed in hope this will change. Lets see.

Coming back to the subject on hand, does anyone know of any black winning games with slates’ 14.Ne5? I would appreciate if you guys can get some games posted. Even club games are welcome. It’ll help in suggesting the general direction of analysis for my Fridz and make my Sunday a less miserable one!

I'll second that - my subscription to Chesspub expired a long time ago, but I haven't missed many Tartakower updates if a glance at the updates info is to be believed....

Sorry about that!  Luckily for me, as I said, at my level I don't have to worry about theory too much (although perversely I still like to) but when I do venture a Tartakower I go for 11...c6 without really being sure why....my QGD books (Lalic, Sadler, Janjgava) all fail to mention (predict?) 14.Ne5!? but Alfonso Romero, in his excellent but quite advanced book says of the move '...the main line here is actually 14.Ne5' whilst he is looking at the well known Topalov-Kramnik game from Linares 1998 featuring 14.Re1.   Anyway, he goes on to examine 14.Ne5 in some detail within his annotations to one of the games you mention, Zviagintsev-Kasimdzhanov, Essen 2002.  He looks at all the games you mention bar the most recent, Epishin-Upton, which featured the move I thought best when I looked at the position, 14...Bxe5.  However, I wasn't satisfied with this and wondered what had happened since - it seems Black hasn't come very far in this line yet.   There is plenty of analysis in his annotations worth looking at if you can get a copy of the book, and I think it would probably be wrong of me to say much more than that here out of respect to the author, other than to reiterate that it doesn't look great for Black.  Not disastrous, but not great.  The final thing I'll note that Romero did say was that after 23...f6?? he thought that 23...Nd7 would have retained some practical chances, but I think all Tartakower players will likely be looking for something rather better than that and at a much earlier stage of the game.....

I'll take a look at 14...Re8, thanks for that suggestion.  It wasn't mentioned by Romero.  Oh, and by the way - the chapter in which he looks at the Tartakower and this game is entitled 'The Dead Bishop'.  Ouch!

slates wrote on 03/28/06 at 08:09:36:


Interesting. Thanks for bringing up. None of the book sources I have, has reference to 14.Ne5!? I dug up a bit more and earliest I could get was Onischuck's Aeroflot 2002 win!

Onischuk,A (2655) - Rychagov,A (2544) [D58]
Moscow Aeroflot op Moscow (8), 09.02.2002

1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.d4 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 0-0 6.Nf3 h6 7.Bh4 b6 8.Be2 Bb7 9.Bxf6 Bxf6 10.cxd5 exd5 11.b4 c6 12.0-0 a5 13.b5 c5 14.Ne5 Qc7 15.Ng4 Be7 16.Bf3 Rd8 17.Rc1 c4 18.Ne5 Bb4 19.Nxd5 Bxd5 20.Bxd5 Rxd5 21.Rxc4 Qd8 22.Qf3 Rxe5 23.Qxa8 Re8 24.Rfc1 Ba3 25.R1c2 Qd7 26.g3 Qxb5 27.Rc8 Bd6 28.Qb7 Rxc8 29.Rxc8+ Kh7 30.Qxf7 Qb1+ 31.Kg2 Qe4+ 32.f3 1-0

There appears to be a problem for black. But 14...Re8 may lead to equality. I can't pretend, I have a solution. I need to work on this position and may be discuss with someone who knows Tartakower. Thanks for bringing this up. No. Come to think of it you s crewed up my weekend.

Only one game in Fischer - Spassky was Tartakower Defence. It did not involve b4. This is the move order.

1.c4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 0-0 6.e3 h6 7.Bh4 b6 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.Bxe7 Qxe7 10.Nxd5 exd5 11.Rc1 Be6 12.Qa4 c5 13.Qa3

Later on Kasparov found improvement with 13...Rc8 14.Be2 15.Kf8 and the pin was no longer important. This is perhaps the reason why this line fell out of favour.

In the line you provided, of course, 11.b4 is the main move and logically so. Idea of Bxf6 and surrendering double B is to clamp c5. Black can play c5 directly but black would be just playing for a draw. At lower level technical superiority will decide the issue. 11.0-0 will transpose in most cases after white plays b4. 11.0-0 makes 11...c6 unattractive and probably that's the reason. Kramnik is the numero uno in 11...c6 lines as black and probably he wants to avoid it as white!

If you want to discuss any specific lines, I would be interested.