I would play the 6...Bb7 Archangel if it weren’t for 7.d3. That kills all the fun out of the opening. If this line were good for Black, then the line 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5.d3 b5 6.Bb3 Bb7 would be played. And maybe even 5.0-0 Be7 6.d3 b5 7.Bb3 Bb7. As virtually no one plays like this, it seems strange to play the Archangel, when most of the time what you’re playing is really a 5.d3 Ruy Lopez with the Bishop committed to b7. Until someone is able to prove that the Bishop is more useful on b7 than leaving it on c8 for the time being, I don’t see a reason to play the Archangel.

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But 7.Bc2 d5 etc. can't arise from the Yurtaev move order. Do you mean 5...Bc5 6.c3 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.0-0 followed by 9.d4? I guess you're talking about two different lines in this paragraph, but it's not clear what happens before "White just goes 8.0-0 and 9.d4".

And the thing about ol' NN he's still out there swinging. My degree is in history, I've been teaching it for 30 years, words fail me, but not very often!

I was interested in these lines a while ago so did some digging. Following is what I remember, no access to my files at the moment:

The feeling I got was that in the Yurtaev 5...b5 6.Bb3 Bc5 7.a4 was the real challenge and if you go 7...Rb8 Svidler is a good summary and was ahead of theory at the time. The Karjakin-Carlsen WCh match line is fairly critical and Svidler was just showing how to hold for black (which Carlsen didn't know...) but IIRC my engine was suggesting a improvement at the critical point there. Or maybe that was the same as Svidler's but in any case with these lines it's all about remembering the long lines of a analysis, which Carlsen failed to do in the WCh match so I decided I wasn't too happy with that.

In blitz I've experimented a bit with 7.a4 Bb7 when after 8.d3 there are some pluses and minuses over 6...Bb7 7.d3 where I wasn't too comfortable but didn't look too carefully.

The Moller looked most promising as with 5...Bc5 6.c3 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.a4 black can avoid transposing with 8...Rb8 with 8...Bg4 which looked interesting - Adhiban had an article in YB123 that I thought might cover this but some real life stuff put chess on the backburner for a while. If someone has that YB and can let me know if it covers exactly that it would be nice

Instead 7.Bc2 d5!? was covered in some recent YB article (YB112 by Van der Tak?). When white just goes 8.0-0 and 9.d4 then Svidler covers these positions well via the Yurtaev move order.

Pawnpusher wrote on 07/02/18 at 00:31:17:


Hmm, I recognized part of that from a note in Alekhine's Deux cent parties d'échecs ("Intéressant est [5...Lf8-c5 6. c2-c3 Fc5-a7] 7. Tf1-e1 Cf6-g4! 8. d2-d4 e5xd4 9. c3xd4 Cc6xd4! 10. Cf3xd4 Dd8-h4! avec une attaque gagnante.") ...but is it really winning?  (I notice that a much later book gave only 7...d6.)

Stigma wrote on 07/01/18 at 19:04:11:


Well, I know that his 6. c3 Ba7 7. d4 Nxe4 has been considered good for White in a number of books going back at least to Fine in the '40s.

Bibs wrote on 07/01/18 at 11:07:36:


Well, here you have Møller writing about it in Danish in a Swedish magazine ...
http://www.schack.se/tfsarkiv/history/1903/tfs_1903_04.pdf

Now a bit in English about an ostensible case of the Møller transposing to the Yurtaev.  (White eschews 8. de as in e.g. Karjakin-Carlsen, alluded to by Stigma.)
https://www.chesspublishing.com/content/1/may18.htm#spa