Markovich wrote on 10/08/07 at 19:43:50:

That is why I nominated 6.Bg5 (Pachman) and 7.f4 (Keres) against the Najdorf. This introduced decades of games, in which White tried to blow away the Sicilian and especially the Najdorf.

woofwoof wrote on 10/08/07 at 18:41:10:


What a striking idea, the embittered Tal cursing the Caro from his death bed.  Where did you get this?

On this thread in general, an awful lot of this stuff is small potatoes.  Some system in the main line Caro?  Come on.

Where you have a revolutionary reappraisal of how to play an opening, or how in general to play the chess openings, that is what could possibly qualify for the honor proposed here.  That's why I think the Boleslavsky Sicilian is quite important.  Something somewhat big within the past couple of decades was Nf3 and soon Rb1 versus the Gruenfeld.  I remember when the textbooks all said that Nf3 was an outright error.   

But looking back, you would have to say Evans' Gambit was the Big One of the early 19th Century; the Tarrasch Defense of the latter 19th; the Indian Systems and Alekhine's Defense of the early 20th.  These last really have to be the hydrogen bombs; there was a complete reappraisal of how to play the chess openings.

Minor but interesting: 

The refutation of the Moeller Attack, which I believe is due to Lajos Portisch.   

9. Qe2 and Rd1 used to be considered quite strong against the Open until Kortchnoi showed how Black could equalize.  That judgement has been unchallenged for at least 20 years.

Ponomariov's demonstration that Black handily survives Zaitsev's piece sac vs. the Open.

Tal's victory against Portisch (1965  Candidates) was one of his greatest wins in an illustrious career. 

Tal won the Caro-Kann battle in 1960, but clearly lost the same argument in 1961.  He tried numerous ideas in later years, so I don't know that he thought he had found a great innovation against it.

Ok, a few more then . . .

This may be too new to judge, but the idea of 9.Nxc6 in the B66 Rauzer seems to have put that particular opening line out of business.  The key, of course, is the follow-up 10.Bf4 and 11.Qe3, which was first played by Santo Roman in 1997.   

The current discussion in the Nimzo/Benoni section brings to mind Adorjan's fantastic innovation.   1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e3 c5 5. Nge2 cxd4 6. exd4 O-O 7. a3 Be7 8. d5 exd5 9. cxd5 Re8 10. Be3 and now 10...Ng4 11. Bd4 Nh6!! basically refuted the 10.Be3 line.  (Although congrats to Semko for hanging tough and still beating Dzindzhi when he faced this in Canada.)

LeeRoth wrote on 10/08/07 at 03:16:18:


Don't you worry about that! My problem will rather be what to select and what to exclude; there are so many ideas! I'll just started this thread in order to see if there are certain "trends" - but of course I don't mind if you all keep this conversation up and running! I'll already know there will be a lot of controversy, but I suppose that doesn't hurt at all.

MNb, 

Yes, 3...a6 is Morphy's moves.  I had already suggested that 3.Bb5 was worth considering as one of the greatest innovations of modern chess.  (I don't consider the rule changes that created modern chess to be opening innovations as such.)

I think the best representatives of the Hyper-Modern school are the Nimzo-Indian and the Queen's Indian.  The very names show how little respect they initially received yet they are considered main lines today.   

Some of the greatest innovations of the Soviet School era include the King's Indian and  Najdorf Sicilian (I still don't let my students play the Najdorf unless they can explain why Black plays a6).

I've noticed that I have found relatively few conceptual innovations for White compared to Black.  This is probably a natural outcome of Black constantly striving for counterplay and White having to react to these innovations.  Yet White's innovations are just as important, if less flashy.  I am interested in seeing Christoph's book to see what innovations he comes up with!

A number of good ideas here!  And I would strongly agree with those advocates of 3...a6 in the Ruy Lopez.  But what about 3.Bb5 in the same?  Surely the idea of putting indirect pressure on the center is the more novel idea?   

More recently, the whole hypermodern school (already lots of mentions, I suppose) deserves attention.  Rather than any singular move, the idea of attacking the center with pieces rather than pawns merits some recognition, lest we miss the forest for the trees...