Normal Topic e6 Sicilian names (Read 6474 times)
Uruk
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Re: e6 Sicilian names
Reply #5 - 09/07/09 at 19:06:33
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Gotcha.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1138095

These guys knew their endgames...

EDIT: on chessgames this bears the name of Kan. I hardly know the guy and a quick glance at his games
         doesn't tell me he had any significant contribution. He seems to have played the Paulsen all along.
  
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Uruk
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Re: e6 Sicilian names
Reply #4 - 09/07/09 at 18:58:23
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Ok, I suppose this is a reaction to my "which SI" post.

It's important to remember what each protagonist had in mind.

Paulsen's philosophy was the power of the Queen on c7.
He would play  e6 - a6  first just to secure the position of Her Majesty.
Nc6  was low-priority.

Things changed with the advent of 5.Bd3 in the late fifties.
To avoid Bd3, a very early Nc6 came to proeminence.

Young Taimanov was playing the traditional  e6 - a6  until Averbakh (I think)
played 5.Bd3 against him and he had to defend for 100 moves.
Unwilling to experience that again, he switched to the rising  e6 - Nc6.

It was just a move-order trick to implement Paulsen's immortal idea: Qc7
(just one of many Paulsen's immortal ideas, of course).

Later Taimanov started to play  Ne7  with plain indifference towards his Queen.
That is his pet line.
  
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Scarblac
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Re: e6 Sicilian names
Reply #3 - 09/07/09 at 11:54:24
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On his "My Best Games in the Sicilian" DVD, Shirov shows a game as white in the Taimanov (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6) and explains that he calls all these variations Paulsen; he doesn't know which are called Paulsen and which are called Taimanov these days.

The reason for this is that Taimanov's name wasn't mentioned in the Soviet chess literature anymore after his 0-6 loss to Fischer, and as Shirov grew up later, in his mind these variations are all called Paulsen.

[this is extremely paraphrased as I saw that DVD half a year ago and am at work now]
  
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MartinC
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Re: e6 Sicilian names
Reply #2 - 09/07/09 at 10:43:59
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There's also the other pseudo Scheviningen style thing with e6/Nc6/d6 Smiley Has anyone ever given that a proper name?
  
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TN
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Re: e6 Sicilian names
Reply #1 - 09/07/09 at 10:25:08
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Here is a list of the names of all the important ...e6 Sicilians (in no particular order):

4...Bc5: Basman-Sale Variation
4...Qb6: Kveinys Variation, although play can transpose to the Grivas Variation
4...Nf6 5.Nc3 Qb6: Ga-Pa Variation
4...Nf6 5.Nc3 Bb4: Pin Variation
4...a6: Kan Variation, also sometimes called the Paulsen Variation
4...Nc6 5.Nb5 d6 6.c4: Maroczy Bind in the Taimanov Variation
4...Nc6 5.Nc3 Nf6: Four Knights Variation
4...Nc6 5.Nc3 a6: Most of the time this is classified is a Taimanov, but to avoid any confusion I refer to this as the '...a6 Taimanov'. Perhaps 'Paulsen Variation' would be a more appropriate name although the majority of players do not refer to 5...a6 as this.
4...Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7: Taimanov Variation. In my opinion this move order is more appropriate for the classification of a 'Taimanov' than 5...a6, although to avoid any confusion with Pub members I refer to each as the '...Qc7 Taimanov' and the '...a6 Taimanov'. 

Curiously, ChessBase's 'SuperKey' by Joachim Zunke classifies the 'Paulsen Variation' as the 6.Be2 a6 variation, but I have not heard of this definition being used by other sources. 

Perhaps the most interesting question, however, is how to classify the rare but tricky 2...e6 3.d4 cd4 4.Nd4 d6 5.Nc3 a6 variation. Perhaps the 'Kan Scheviningen' is the most appropriate name, as the variation can also be played via. a Kan move order. 

Edit: I chose to exclude the Nc6/e6/d6 variation as I have no idea what name it has, if it has a name. At first I thought it may have been called the 'Modern Scheviningen', but remembered that this is where Black plays the Scheviningen without ...a6.
« Last Edit: 09/07/09 at 13:04:37 by TN »  

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Phil Adams
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e6 Sicilian names
09/07/09 at 09:59:41
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The nomencalature of the ...e6 systems in the Sicilian (apart from the Four Knights and the Scheveningen) can be very confusing, as I once realized when trying to explain it to a pupil. A further confusion factor is that the names sometimes refer to particular move orders, and at other times to specific positions reached, which can then be identified as belonging to a particular "system".

1) Move orders
In English chess circles, by the early 1960s at latest, the name Kan System for the move order 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 e6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 a6 was well established (see e.g. page 137 in Clarke's book on Tal).

Not much later, we began calling the sequence characterized by a combination of ...e6, ...Nc6 and ...Qc7, before...a6, the Taimanov, e.g. 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 e6 5 Nc3 Qc7 6 Be2 a6. This had the advantage (as perceived then) of preventing the flexible 5 Bd3, which had been identified as early as the late 1950s as a major challenge to the Kan move order, answering flexibility with flexibility.

2) Positions
In his books, Taimanov himself seems to use the name Paulsen to describe any open Sicilian in which Black plays a combination of ...e6, ...a6 and ...Qc7, before committing the Ng8 or blocking the Bf8 by ...d6. He himself played many games with this from the late fifties onwards, using different move orders, before eventually developing his own system, which differs from the Paulsen by missing out an early ...Qc7 and substituting an early ...Nge7.

The above attempts to describe the situation in the English-speaking sector of the chess world. Have I missed out (or messed up) anything important in this description? Can anyone enlighten us as to the nomenclature in use in other "chess cultures”?

The difficulties in classifying all of this can be viewed in fact as a testament to the great flexibility of the ...e6 Sicilian and to the lasting legacy of the Paulsen brothers.
  
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