Alias wrote on 04/25/07 at 11:49:52:
For the d3-variation, there are the books by Kaufman and Greet to study and there's also a NiC yb article.
Before a recent team match we noticed that one of the players in the opposing team always used the Schliemann. A quick study of the section in the Kaufman book helped our player to get a large advantage right out of the opening. He didn't know the line before.
I can only think that Black was the worse player, or that he didn't know what he was doing. 4. d3 is for people who would rather try to nurse a borderline += into an eventual win with scant risk of complication, than book up suffiently to play 4. Nc3! and actually win. In other words, it's for sissies. (Oh all right, it's a simple way to pursue the point
if you're the better player -- well, what unambitious system isn't?)
Ivanov and Kulagin is a most excellent and indeed essential Schliemann reference. So by all means, try to find a copy. However, I'm not sure if it treats 4...Nf6.
There actually are some strategic considerations in the position that arises from the theoretical main line, 4...fxe4 5. Nxe4 d5 6. Nxe5 dxe4 7. Nxc6 Qg5 8. Qe2 Nf6 9. f4"!" (9. Nxa7+!) 9...Qxf4 10. Ne5+ c6 11. d4 Qh4+ 12. g3 Qh6 13. Bc4 Be6. Black will enter the middle game with a grip on the kingside light sqares, a passed but isolated e-pawn, and his king in a somewhat rickety queenside castled position. The position is dynamic and there is nuance in the play; notably, how to deploy each side's the rooks. Having completed his development, Black sometimes just plays ...Kb8, ...Ka8, because there's nothing much better to do and it increases the security of his king. Typically Black's knight goes to d5 and dares White to play c4. Speelman famously beat Timman in this position, for the very good reason that he understood it better (Timman played c4 and d4-d5; Speelamn played c6-c5 and then blockaded). So it's not quite true that there's no strategy in the Schliemann.
If that were really White's best against this defense, I'd still be playing it. Black is no worse there than he is in the other lines of the Spanish, or not much worse, anyway. But unfortunately, as I have said elsewhere on this board, I have never found anything against 9. Nxa7+! Bd7 10. f4!. It seems that Black's best is 10...Qc5 11. Nb5 Qxc7 12. d4! Bb4+ 13. Kf2 Qxe2+ 14. Kxe2, after which Black's pawn-down ending looks quite dreary. Ivanov and Kulagin say +=, but I think that's optimistic. Maybe +=, if you have Capablanca's endgame technique, but to defend such endgames is not why I play 1...e5. If anybody has an antidote to 9. Nxa7+! I'd like to know about it. It is amazing how 9. Nxa7+! gets ignored in modern theory books.
Offbeat Spanish, for a very notable example.
My impression is that White played imprecisely at the Melody Amber. After 4...fxe4 5. Nxe4 Nf6 6. Nxf6+! Qxf6 7. Qe2 Be7 8. Bxc6 dxc6 9. Nxe5 Bf5 10. 0-0! (I hope I remembered that correctly!), White is supposed to meet 10...0-0-0 with 11. d3 and 10...0-0 with 11. d4. Instead if I recall correctly, at the Melody Amber, 10...0-0 11. d3 was played. I don't have the score; am I wrong? In any case, I hardly think that it is a ringing endorsement of the Schliemann that it was used to win a blindfold game. Also it is perhaps notable that 4...Nf6 was
not chosen.
Before people became aware of 10. 0-0!, the old theory was 10. d3 0-0! =, 10. d4 0-0-0! =. But with 10. 0-0!, White waits to see where Black castles, then plays the d-pawn accordingly. This works because Black has no way to temporize, and because 10...Bxc2 is disastrous for him.
.... 9. f4 Qxf4 10. Na7+!
10... Bd7
10... c6 11. Nxc6 Bd7 12. Nd4 ...
10... Kd8 11. Nxc8 ...
11. Bxd7 Nxd7 12. d4 Qf5 13. Nb5
for me it seems even better than the line with the immediate 9...Na7!, since the queen can't go to c5 once she has taken the pawn on f4. how could black have improved?