Your first line transposes to a variation that I had a long look at, along with MNb and ArKheiN- 7.Bg5 e6 8.Qe2, when we discussed 8...Be7 9.0-0-0! at length, and although I initially placed too much trust in Fritz's evaluation of about -0.50, further analysis showed that White has dangerous compensation for the pawn.  I recall that 10.Rhf1 looked good.  Unfortunately I independently found 8...Bb4! (when looking for ways for Black to thwart White's ideas of queenside castling and kingside play) when I doubt White has enough compensation.

Stefan Bucker subsequently looked at this line and reached much the same conclusions as we did.  The idea is relevant to the Gutman line though, as if 7.Bg5 Nbd7 (instead of 7...e6) then 8.Qe2 works quite well as Black can't get ...Bb4 in until after White has castled queenside- as per analysis by Bucker.

In essence the problem with 7.Qe2 is that White's traditional BDG approaches with kingside castling are generally insufficient against the ...c6, ...Bf5 lines, while White can't castle queenside because of 7...e6 and 8...Bb4.

Yes, I know it's a move, I know there's some logic in it. The difference in my opinion is that in the Caro Kann, White hasn't sacrificed a pawn for a lead in development and open files yet. 1.e4 c6 strikes of much more logic than 5...c6. The Caro Kann has a different idea all together. Obviously Black intends ...d5, striking back in the center on the light squares. That's clearly not Black's intention with 5...c6, since the d-pawn has already been traded off. To compare it to a Caro Kann where Black is a pawn up is just silly in my opinion - the two positions are incredibly dissimilar. 

kylemeister wrote on 05/06/09 at 20:17:37:


Yes! Very similar. Another funny thing about me doing all this work on the BDG is that I don't own any literature. Maybe I could have found the refutation of this line very quickly, but instead I wasted hours on others lines and then just stumble upon 8...Bb4 by accident!

I have been analyzing the BDG a lot lately, mostly out of boredom at work (Numerical Simulations take a while to run and I don't have much else to do). Anyway, I was checking out 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. f3 exf3 5. Nxf3 c6 6. Bc4 Bf5 7. Qe2!? as a possible attacking try. I'm not dumping on Stefan Bucker's nice column for Chess Cafe. Maybe White gets enough in the Gutman line, but it's not violent enough for me! I was of the opinion (just after a cursory analysis by Rybka and myself) that 7...e6 8. Bg5 Be7 9. 0-0-0 0-0 10. Kb1! Nbd7 11. Bxf6! (Two nonobvious moves in a row if you ask me) Bxf6 (11...Nxf6 12. Ne5 with g4 and h4 to follow) 12. Ne5 was good enough for at least equality, and that 9...Nbd7 10. Bxf6! with a probable d5 blast was also good enough, but then I ran into 8...Bb4!, and haven't found anything. Any ideas?

Part of what bothers me so much about 5...c6 is that it seems less sensical than a lot of other variations. Black moves a pawn on the queenside (wasting time), takes away the c6 square for his knight, and normally follows with developing another queenside piece(sometimes twice if he puts the bishop on g6). Meanwhile he's still 3 moves away from castling his king away to safety. 7. Qe2 strikes me as quite logical, developing and getting ready to try to force d5 through in the fastest and most effective way possible. The queen opposes king on the e-file, and the Rook opposes queen on the d-file. How can it not work!?! I hate when chess isn't logical!