Hello,

  As far as I can tell, what Mnb points out, is the only theoretically significant bit in whole article. In a6 slav, for example, sort of plays through the recent Topalov v Kamsky game, but only suggestion for black is to play 5...g6 instead of the currently popular 5...nb-d7.

Bye John S

FightingDragon wrote on 07/20/06 at 09:06:30:


Keene is really just giving notes on Spassky-Larsen, Buenos Aires 1979,  while also recommending this system to the attention of Black players -- the same thing, oddly enough, that Andrew Martin did in a recent ChessPub update.  If all 4...Nf6 games went as well for Black as that one, this system would be more popular than the Najdorf.   It's true that this system is very dynamic and offers Black plenty of opportunity for the whole point, but the key challenge is White's early kingside fianchetto.  So far, no one has found a convincing antidote to that, and so 4...Nf6 is not played very much.

I asked Martin if he had any ideas for Black against 5. Nxf6+ gxf6  6. c3 Bf5  7. Nf3 Nd7  8. g3!, and as yet, his answer hasn't appeared.  Some weeks ago, I pointed out that there was a bad error in the analysis of this variation in the ChessPub Caro ebook, and so far, nobody has bothered to clean it up.   

See here for that detail and also the thoughts of various players about this line:

http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1147831967

Hello!

Has anybody read Ray Keene's article about a complete defence for black?
You can find it at: http://chessville.com/Keene/AllPurposeBlackDefence.htm

What do you think of it?
In my opinion it is rather superficial, but what can you expect from an article that presents a universal black defence?

What I really would be interested in (listen up, Caro-Kann fans  ) is if black is really fine after the variations Keene gives.
I always thought black had problems in the 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 de4: 4.Ne4: Nf6 5.Nf6:+ gf6: variation.