As helpful as ever thanks

14 Bf6 doesn't really lose a whole tempo since black then has to play Qc7 to force f4 and then Qb6 later of course. Still 14 f4 may well be better.

Black can maybe improve a bit on your line after: 14.f4! c4 15.Be2 Qb6 16.Rb1 Qc5 17.Qd2 Nf5 18.Bf3 Be6 19.Ne2 Ne3 20.a4 etc by playing 18 .. Ne3 instead in order to try and put his bishop on a more useful square than e6 (f5 say).

Certainly something like: 19 Ne2 Bg4 (.. Bf5 Rc1 ^ Nd4 is still very strong) 20 Nd4 NxN 21 PxN Qxa3 22 BxB NxB seems a bit more comfortable than your main lines?

19 Bh4 Bf5 20 Bf2 d4 is just a mess. 

However the computerish tactics after 19 f5 Nxc2+ 20 QxN Bxf5 21 Qb2 Bxb1 22 e6 Rf5 23 QxB etc might be a problem. Black should pick up the e pawn but the bishops might turn out useful. I really don't know how to evaluate this position properly.



I certainly can't see why this is obviously worse than the other 'shock' weapons of 10.. Nd7/e5 (neither of which is really fully sound of course.). Whether it's better I'm not sure.

I was recently casting around for some new ideas for black in the 7.. o-o Winaver and remembered an old article from JeremySilman.com - the article was written by Manuel Monasterio and can be found at:
http://www.jeremysilman.com/chess_opng_anlys/Amazing_new_move_in_French_Def.html.

The idea from the article comes after: 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 e5 Ne7 5 a3 Bxc3+ 6 PxN c5 7 Qg4 o-o 8 Bd3 f5 9 ef Rxf6 10 Bg5 Rf7 11 Qh5 g6 12 Qd1 and now the somewhat amazing 12 .. e5!?!?



You can understand why this took a while to discover - on first sight it just loses a pawn for no reason. However it's not as simple as that.

For example the game in the article went: 13 de Nbc6 14 Bf6 Qc7 15 f4 c4 16 Be2 Nf5 17 Bf3 Ne3 18 Qd2 Qb6 19 Bxd5 NxB 20 QxN when both Qb2 (the game) and Qe3+ seem to work out OK for black. This was a ~2300 level correspondence game so should have been a decent test. 

It certainly seems reasonable that the b6 <-> g1 diagonal and e3 knight should provide enough compensation. The diagram position below is before whites move 19 in the game and shows this.




From the article the stem game for all of this seems to be Sadowski - Ponomarev, Email 2004. I can't see any games on my database of Twic's.

I was wondering if anyone had analysed/played this since the article? 

Having looked at it for a little bit it certainly looks like a good practical weapon - compared to many other lines it has the substantial advantage that black gets his fair share of the fun.....

Depending on exactly how good it is the idea might even be theoretically important. Black is probably ok in the main lines but they don't all give much by way of winning chances. White has alternatives to 11 Qh5/12 Qd1 but they aren't quite as dangerous. At the very least it really was an impressive feat of imagination by Ponomarev(or whoever) to come up with this

For a change this one might not even be computer inspired....