mad_knight wrote on 04/25/07 at 16:17:03:



How come you gave it up?

It seems a quite reasonable set-up for white if he's more interested in getting a full board middlegame without having to learn a lot of forced variations.

Besides, when looking at the games of the most succesful whites I noticed that they seemed to prefer the move order 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.Qe2 Nc6 4.Nf3 - which could certainly appeal to the lazy as white plays a 'Spanish light' with c3, d3 etc more or less reducing black to either a Be7 or a Bc5 set-up. And it avoids the Petroff - so it's not unlikely that white would be able to play this in at least 80% of his e4 e5 games...

As for winning chances, one shouldn't expect to win quickly as there are few traps when the pawns aren't in contact. Still, some of the white players have very impressive stats, e.g. the Italian IM Renzo Mantovani has 9½ of 10 with it - and the draw was an eight move quicky vs Arlandi. So below GM level it doesn't seem to hurt white's chances too much.

Here's a pgn with some games from the most frequent and successful Qe2-users plus a few known names to get white below 90% 

ErictheRed wrote on 04/27/07 at 07:28:45:

Do you mean Jonny Hector? Apparently, Johnny Hector used to be an NFL football player.  And according to chessgames.com, Jonny the chess player rather specialised in the Vienna game  
Perhaps you have other sources?!

MNb wrote on 04/26/07 at 20:57:06:

Point taken. My memory is not entirely reliable, but I thought this was a bad line for black.

dsanchez wrote on 04/26/07 at 14:53:32:

It is not a Max-Lange and I dont think there is a direct transposition possible (not if some silly moves are played). Iirc black has basically 3 moves: 5..Ng4, 5..Ne4 and 5..d5. Only the latter could transpose, but 6.0-0 isnt exactly a good move.

Thanks, Markovich, that's encourageing...

Well, it looks like 4 Qe2 is not such a good idea after all.  

So I had another look at the Two Knights and came across a variation which I think suits my style better; it goes like this:

e4 e5
Nf3 Nc6
Bc4 Nf6
d4 exd4, and now
e5 instead of the more complex 0-0.

I'll try it out in practice and hope it'll turn out all right...

Anyway, thank you all for your input

Who am I to disagree with an IM, but I don't give this idea nearly as much credit as Emms does.  4. Qe2 Bc5  5. 0-0 d6 and already White has to decide whether to allow Black's bishop to come to g4.  If he plays h3, this weakens his kingside and, perhaps, increases Black's inclination to castle queenside and launch a kingside pawn storm.  Or for that matter 6. h3 a6! intending 7...Be6 with a routine, perfectly adequate game for Black.  But if Black's bishop does land on g4, d2-d4 will be rather difficult to play anytime soon, will it not?

I doubt if it leads to outright disadvantage, but 4. Qe2 looks quite lame to me.