MNb wrote on 05/12/08 at 11:47:40:


I suspect that this largely answers my question--thank you, MNb.  If White has brought his/her knight to f3, then Bb4 is on.  If not, Nge2 is possible.  I think, though, I would want to transpose the two variations, though:

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Bb4 6.Bg5 (which is a Ragozin proper, and presumably can be reached via the Kasparov NID).

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Nbd7 6.Nf3 Bb4

I too thought that the Westphalia and the Manhattan were the same -- wasn't the S.S. Westphalia the name of the ship that many of the participants took to get to the New York 1927 tourney?  In one version of the story, some of the players analyzed the variation on the way over.  Either way, as far as I know, the Manhattan or the Westphalia is a variation of the Ragozin. 

MNb, assume you meant 6.e3, although there are other options on White's sixth move.  6.Qc2 is a Nimzo (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 d5 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5) and 6.Qb3 has also been played.  6.Nf3 of course is a regular Ragozin.

After 6.e3, 6..Nbd7 does, I think, leave White for choice.  Flear prefers 6..h6 7.Bh4 g5 8.Bg3 Ne4, which leads to another branching point (all of which he covers, btw).  9.Qc2 seems like the most natural choice to me when I had known and not been worried about 9..h4.  But there is also 9..Be6!? which did well enough to equalize in, as far as I can tell, its only GM outing -- a Beliavsky-I.Sokolov game given by Flear.

MNb wrote on 05/12/08 at 11:47:40:


Yes, but not if Black notices that his opponent has just played an illegal move.

MNb wrote on 05/12/08 at 11:47:40:


There is a lot of name confusion in these lines. I think of the position after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.Bg5 Bb4 as the Vienna, and 4.Nc3 Bb4 as the Ragozin. Maybe then if black later meets Bg5 with Nbd7 we have officially transposed to a "Manhattan", but nowadays this is a main line of the Ragozin anyway (Although playing ...c5 before ...Nbd7 has played a part in the explosion of recent years), and the name "Ragozin" for the whole complex seems to have stuck. Fine with me.

There is also the name "Westphalia variation" in the literature, after a boat I think, but I have no idea what minute nuance in the move order this refers to...

HgMan wrote on 05/12/08 at 02:04:37:


I used to think that these lines didn't work because White has Nge2, taking the sting out of the pin.  But GM Flear covers 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Bb4 in the Dangerous Weapons book and makes a pretty good case for it.  4.Bg5 Nbd7 5.e3 Bb4 should be pretty much the same, as White usually plays cxd5 at some point, transposing to the Exchange.

Could somebody post a link?  Much obliged...

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One thing to beware of is that a central idea in the Lipnitsky analysis seems to be under a cloud since a Bobby Fischer game around 1960. The book focuses on Nc6 variations and the line in question is where black meets the e3/Bd3 system with  dc followed by an unforced Bd6 and then e5. The move Nb5 as an immediate response to Bd6 seems to cause problems.

Thats why
I declined to take up the system when I got the book years ago. It doesn't seem like things have changed since--White is scoring round 80% in this line according to my big chessbase tree and no one seems to have repeated Gligoric-Fischer.

Thanks for the suggestions to check out the analysis here. This site does have some excellent stuff on the Ragozin. I see now that the current lines focus on c5 and Nd7 by Black, not Nc6.

Hello,

The coverage of the opening is quite detailed, you can see what is in the book on a russian chess site. Covers lines like 5Qc2 pxp havn't seen anywhere else. Bits of this opening analysis is used in other books, in the great tradition of chess plagarism, for example Peter Clark's on Petrosian, and Dvorsky's middle game series. The  worse coverage seems to be of 5pxp pxp 6.Bg5 which became the main-line, so would be relatively easy to update.

Bye John S