Dvoretsky has a lot of analysis on this line in two of his books, one being Strategic Chess.  I forget the other.

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 12/27/11 at 18:06:03:


Playing an English set-up is fine of course but in this particular case the automatic Rb1, b4-b5 doesn´t offer white much in the line I mentioned, at least as far as I know.

I don´t know who said the classical KID is basically a race. This is certainly true for some variations after 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 but even here the play does not have to be so single minded. And if Black plays something different on move 7 race situations are more the exception than the rule in my experience.

gramsci wrote on 12/27/11 at 19:19:05:


You can try 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.g3 Bg7 4.Bg2 0-0 5.0-0 d6 6.Nc3 a6!? when 7.d4 Nc6 transposes back to the Panno and if White plays 7.d3 trying to play the stereotyped  Rb1, b4-b5 again you can try 7... e5 as played and explained by Bologan in his book "The King´s Indian".

Fllg wrote on 12/27/11 at 17:39:07:

What are they? I'd like to play this variation as black vs 1.Nf3 English (it's true that 1.c4 allows black others set-ups without Nf6 or f5 before Nf6) but I can't if I want to play the Panno vs. the Fianchetto KID. You just can play this variation if the Classical Fianchetto is in your KID repertoire.

Fllg wrote on 12/27/11 at 17:39:07:


Wow, the danger of playing an English set-up against the KID is that play may become stereotyped?

I always thought that was the main danger of playing 1.d4 Nf6. 2.c4 against the KID! The English, at least for me, is far more fresh and has far more variety of ideas than can normally be seen in the KID. as someone once said, the Classical KID is basically a race. There's very little subtlety of thought there. 

The Fianchetto KID is a bit more flexible, but if flexibility is the goal, either the English or the Saemisch KID are more preferable.

This is one of the variations of the English opening. It comes through various move orders. In my reference database the move 8. Rb1 is played in 4802 games with 52.9% success for white. Some higher rated players tried this setup: Botvinnik, Larsen, Petrosian, Kotov, Taimanov, Polugaevsky, Huebner, Anand, Leko, Eljanov, Gashimov, Gelfand, Bareev, Caruana, Gurevich (an expert in this line), K.Georgiev, Delchev, U.Andersson (an expert here, too), Chernin, Vaganyan (one of the main specialist in this setup), Miles and so on..and so on.. What to say?.. If you want to learn this against KID prepare yourself for a hard work! This opening variation is about equal for both sides but leads to a strategic battle all over the board. White has his chances on the queen's side while black has his own on the king's side. Many good players prefer such setups in order to outplay their opponents. They don't count on advantage right after the opening. So if you want a positional strategic game this is for you. As for the best sources, there are many books that explain the main ideas for both sides - opening repertoires and alike. But imho, the first thing to do is to browse through the games of the abovementioned players in order to know if this is for you..or not.. 

notyetagm wrote on 12/27/11 at 05:15:48:


Don't know about the name. It is basically a reversed Closed Sicilian, not a KID. It is the base in A Strategic Opening Repertoire. One person that has played it a lot is Ulf Andersson.