Thanks for your opinion, MarinFan, but do you really think 12...Ng6 13.fxe5 dxe5 is a good idea? In my opinion, the white pieces are far from ideally placed to put pressure on the hanging pawns...

I agree that white doesn't have much here anyway, but all I want is a playable position that makes me feel comfortable somehow.

And, yes, those knight moves to the queenside were surely nothing to worry about

Thanks for your advice Mr. Kosten, your great book has served me well over the last few years, and I still think of it as the most useful opening book in my library.

Fortunately I'm collecting all my blitz games with this guy (my rating is only ~1900 ELO and he's a tough nut to crack with his ~2300, at least for me), and I finally found one with the line your advocating:

1.c4 f5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.d3 e5 6.e4 d6 7.Nge2 O-O 8.exf5 gxf5 9.O-O Nc6 10.d4 Qe8 11.d5 Ne7 12.f4 e4 13.Be3 Ng4 14.Bd4 Qh5 15.h3 Nf6. Then I played 16.Qd2 to prepare the somehow artificial knight manoeuvre Nc3-d1-e3 and lost the game later on, but I suppose this had nothing to do with the opening...

In fact I like this line much more than those in my first posting, so do you think I chose the right setup here? What shall I do if he maintains the tension in the center by, let's say, 11...Ne7 12.f4 Ng6, perhaps followed by h7-h5-h4 with a kingside attack?

I'll be playing a regular tournament game against this guy in a few days, and I hope to offer him some resistance

Hi everyone,

in his "Dynamic English" Tony Kosten advocates the following line against the Dutch Leningrad (chapter 12, page 121):

1.c4 f5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.d3 0-0 6.e4 d6 7.Nge2 e5 8.exf5! (to avoid the pawn sacrifice 8...f4! after the "normal" 8.0-0) 8...gxf5 9.0-0. So far, so good.

The problem is that after 9.0-0, Kosten only gives 9...c6 10.d4 with a transposition to the chapter's main line. But a local FM I'm blitzing against from time to time always plays 9...Nc6 instead of 9...c6. This would transpose back to Chapter 1, Line B, but there Kosten only gives the line 1.c4 e5 2.g3 Nc6 3.Bg2 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.e4 d6 6.Nge2 f5 7.d3 Nf6 8.0-0 0-0 9.Nd5, saying that 9.exf5 is possible but the text-move is even better (page 23). While 9.exf5 gxf5 indeed would have transposed to the Leningrad move order-line I'm asking for, my particular position after 9...Nc6 is sadly not covered in the book.

I've tried several approaches, including the thematical pawn breaks 10.d4 and 10.f4. But my opponent always plays 10...Qe8, and I'm not happy with the arising positions.

One game went 1.c4 f5 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.d3 d6 6.e4 e5 7.Nge2 O-O 8.exf5 gxf5 9.O-O Nc6 10.f4 Qe8 11.fxe5 dxe5 12.d4 exd4 13.Nxd4 Nxd4 14.Qxd4 c6 and I was not able to find a good square for my queen. The position may be objectively not much worse, because white has a small structural plus in view of black's isolated f5-pawn, but a good coordination of white's forces is difficult to achieve. For example, 15.Qh4 is strongly met by 15...Ng4.

Any ideas, starting from white's 10th move?