Quote:AFAIK this is a standard defensive setup for Black in the Chigorin. After Black has played g6 to keep White's Knight on g3 (or e3) off f5, a kingside fortress is created with f6 and Nf6-e8-g7, Nc6-d8-f7.
Really? I used to play the white side and I never saw anybody playing that against me. The standard idea
is to play g6 and fianchetto the dark-square, but putting the knight's on g7 and f7? Also, black hardly ever gets to play f5 unless white has made a mistake or maybe in the fianchetto variation (Kramnik tried in the Berlin but didn't stop to control g5 first so he lost).
I've looked at some games where black doesn't play f5, but f6 with the knight on g7, horrible. It certainly is not a fortress. In most of the games played at high level in the Rubenstein, white almost always closes most of the queenside (the a file maybe opened, but that's for white not black!) via a4 first, then b4. Black ends up rather behind the curve on that side as well. He can create a passed pawn and try to get through the blockade, but that's it. I'm talking about IM and GM praxis here. I'm certainly not relying on
my games.
Quote:Opening preparation for the most popular openings generally is about studying the middlegames or even endgames that arise from them.
Yes and no. It certainly applies to the typical middlegame positions. Marin's are not. At best, it's the long way around Robin Hood's barn studying middlegames from a variation you might not want to play in a must win situation.
And I think there's a tolerance of Sverre's and Marin's work that is unacceptable because the works fall under the heading of "Ruy Lopez" the king of openings!
If I told you, you could learn a lot from my book on the O'Kelly Sicilian that you could apply to your scheveningen, you'd laugh in my face. Or at least you should. You don't take a sub-standard variation and then claim it's going to help you play different mainline variations.
The real problem is that he spends
double the number of pages talking about the Rubenstein than he does the Petrosian.
I find all this talk that this will help the reader understand anything but third tier lines vague and subjective.
Houska's book, by the way, contains lines where black castles kingside. The book isn't about avoidance of theory, but finding good playable lines within a golden mean (not too much theory, but not wimping out or passive either).
Quote:The reason that you will learn the most by playing the mainlines...
But this is what I'm arguing
for, not against! In his book Marin says
Quote:I intentionally avoided fashionable systems. Experience has taught me that fashion is an unpredictable and capricious lady; after certain variations have been well-enough forgotten, they might come back into the limelight. Secondly (and more importantly I would say), the task of catching the very essence of the position in lines where theory advances with big steps (not necessarily in the correct direction) is rather difficult. It is much easier to take a photo or sketch a portrait of a virtually immobile image than to describe a highly animated scene.Instead, I have preferred to choose variations with a very long past, involving the names of great players including world champions. This will give us the opportunity of following the evolution of thought processes through the years. It is also supposed to lend some stability to the theoretical conclusions given in the following pages. Truths that have required years or even decades to unfold completely to human understanding, and involve names like Rubinstein, Botvinnik, Keres, Smyslov, Petrosian or Karpov will hardly ever be shaken by practice or with the help of a computer.
In order to be fair to Marin, I put the whole quote.
Again, I hate to be so blunt, but I think "fashion" here is a euphemism for "accepted theory." If something is out of fashion, it's just not capriciousness at play, there's usually a damn good reason people don't play it! How about something called "winning chances?" I don't know why Postny chose to play this variation, but his games had demonstrated that f6 isn't so hot (he played f5 against Korneev) and that the queenside is nothing special for black. Of course, it's a different story if white doesn't know about the a4/b4 plan.
Marin gives third or fourth tier variations that are passive and don't give black much to look forward to (Yeah, I'm really glad Petrosian got draws, let's forget that his Qd7 Winawer, Old Indian, risky inerpretation of the Kan aren't really played anymore).
Marin is simply putting a happy spin on this by connecting the variations to names (The Marshall variation in the French sucks and so does Rubenstein's Ne5 in the Semi-Slav for white so names don't impress me, Mike) and by attempting to make these unpopular variations look good by virtue of their unpopularity -- subjective.
I look at whether I think his variations are good objectively, and although the Petrosian variation makes some sense as a backup, the Rubenstein as a main recommendation does not.