The chapter in the Flear book is good enough, but it suffers from the same problem that afflicts the rest of the book - limited space allowed.

 Without wishing to veer off on a tangent, I've been having great fun analyzing, and achieving much success as black at the board, with the venerable idea   e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bb5 a6 Ba4 Nf6 0-0 Be7 Re1 b5 Bb3 d6 c3 0-0 h3 Na5 Bc2 c5 d4 Qc7 Nbd2 cd cd Bb7 d5 Bc8 Nf1 Ne8.    Not fashionable, and far from the cutting edge, there would be no good reason for Glenn to explore this line in a topical opening book with as wide a remit as 'the Ruy Lopez mainline'.

  Back to the line in question.  Theory in the 9... Nd7 line must move at a Snail's pace, slower than even in the Chigorin.  I don't know of any revolutionary developments, and would not expect them any time soon (and that, it seems, is when they come along and overturn existing theory, out of the blue!). It is, and possibly forever shall be, just a good, solid defence; a reliable second string to any e5 player's repertoire.  Ideal for those days where, perhaps against slightly weaker opposition, you might not want to play the Chigorin, the Zaitsev, the Breyer, or whatever your favoured defence is, and expect to generate good winning chances.

  As is stated in Flear's book, 11. Be3 (9... Nd7 10. d4 Bf6 11. Be3) looks as much fun for Black as White after 11... Na5  12. Bc2 Nc4 13. Bc1 Bb7 14. a4 d5.   I can't see any recent games on the chessbase online database (admittedly, a limited resource, and one we all have access to - games referred to in this post won't be arcane, alas).  If you want more adventure, you could always try and recreate the masterpiece by Black that is Sznapik - Topalov, as featured in Taulbut's book 'Understanding the Spanish'.

  More interestingly, some games have been played in the critical line contested in  Volokitin - Blagojevic.   There isn't any point to posting the pgns here without analyzing them properly first, but it might be worth comparing them with Khalifman's analysis in the awesome 'Opening according to Anand, Volume II' (my copy has gone yellow, coffee stained thumbs having rifled it so often. How can you play the Spanish with either colour without this book?)

  1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. 0-0 Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 0-0 9. h3 Nd7 10. d4 Bf6 11. a4 Bb7 12. Na3 ed 13. cd Re8 14. ab ab 15. Bf4 Na5 16. Bc2 b4 17. Nb5 Bc6 18. Qd3 b3 19. Bb1
was Nijboer - Gargataglia Asis,  Barbera del valles 2007. 

  Rather than 19. Bb1, resulting in a position judged to offer White a 'slight pull' by Flear, yet offering 'perceptible counterplay' to Khalifman and Bezgodov, the latter pair recommend Bd1, and provide analysis.  This does not appear to have been played yet.

  All that and it's hard to believe early alternatives like 9... Nd7 10. d4 Nb6 and 9... Nd7 10. d4 Bf6 11. a4 Rb8  have been exhausted.

   

Thank you very much for the reactions. 
In the meantime, I found the Flear book. I'll try to have a look at the Anand-book.

@ TopNotch : forgive me to have waken up your reaction. For my defence :
* English isn't my best language at all
* I thought the name 'Karpov variation' was quite standard. I have a book from Bykhovsky (I believe) about the Zaitsev and Karpov variation (at least : that's the title of it). I found this reason enough to adopt this name without more consideration.
I am rated 2300 myself but never played 1...e5 nor 1.e4, so my knowledge of the specific Ruy Lopez variations is very limited. Until 2 weeks ago I couldn't tell you how to reach the Zaitsev variation...

Anyway : thank you for your extensive reaction!

Glenn Flear's book on the main line Ruy has a Chapter which you might find useful as an update.

Roger Williamson wrote on 10/25/08 at 00:05:31:

So it's very handy to include moves when asking a question like that.

  Do you mean the Ruy Lopez with 9... Nd7? 

  Forgive TopNotch's facetious reply, as this defence has more aliases than Carlos the Jackal. It may as well be the Sputnik defence, or rather the Keres-Ragozin-Karpov-Moscow-Sputnik defence.

  And, in answer to your question, I don't know.

Hi,

I found only 1 game featuring the Karpov variation.
What's the theoretical status of it? Are there important games to know and did anything appear on it lately?

regards