kylemeister wrote on 01/08/14 at 17:13:12:


I'm always surprised at how little "new" theory there is, or more accurately at how often old theoretical verdicts are unchanged by new games.  

Sorry for the off-topic/tangent, I was just trying to point out that there is a lot of scope for original play even now that a few popular books have been written on the Catalan.

Thanks, Orangecounty.  My own experience was that against non-Masters I saw a lot of passive Closed Catalan positions where I had more space and play against a bad bishop on c8, more or less the same type of play that White gets when Black misplays a QGD.  I also saw a lot of Bogo-Indians.

I also wanted to point out that there is truly fashion in chess, and before Kramnik started playing the Catalan it was almost completely unknown to amateurs.  Of course that isn't the case any more, but amateur chess fashion is almost entirely dictated by which openings have had a good recent book written about them (or in the case of the Catalan, several!).  

Finally, I achieved a completely winning position against IM Danny Rensch recently by just following an old line recommended in a subvariation of Dunnington's old book: http://www.chess.com/video/player/live-sessions-an-old-friend-and-a-new-line.  Unfortunately I didn't find the most precise way of winning in a 10-minute game, and because Danny is an old friend I just took a draw at the end (I also didn't know that he was filming it and thought we'd look at the opening line and move order issues together, for fun). 

Afterward I looked through some of Danny's games and other videos in this line, and it looks like he's done some work on it and played it a lot against strong opposition (GMs even), and he just completely walked into a losing position against me unawares.  I don't mean that as a knock against Danny, I just want to point out that there are always plenty of interesting options that aren't in the latest repertoire books, and allowing yourself to be swayed too much by fashion (only what's been covered by Avrukh or Bologan) is dangerous.  And in that case, the line Danny walked into was known from...the mid 80's?  But it's completely out of fashion (for reasons unknown to me).  It was played once in Giri-Morozevich, 2012, in which White won quickly, so...it's a mystery why White doesn't play this way more often.     

Along those lines, I have a very good score with lines like the sharp 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. g3 d5 4. Nf3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O dxc4 7.Na3!? and the "boring" 7. Qc2 a6 8. Qxc4 b5 9. Qc2 Bb7 10. Bg5 Nbd7 11. Bxf6 Nxf6 12. Nbd2.  I just analyze games of specialists (Krasenkow has an incredible score in 7.Na3, for instance) and go.  There is so much more to chess than "repertoire book theory." 

Sorry, don't have any special database, just Megabase 2012. But there is of course also a lot of material at ... Chesspublishing.com 

I agree, though, it is pretty cumbersome to type all the lines. I am still working on it.

As for the holes, of the ones I found some have been played even OTB, not just in corr.

Yes, that is correct, I meant GM1 of course, sorry for the typo.

fling wrote on 01/05/14 at 08:29:38:


ITYM Avrukh's GM1?

cma6 wrote on 01/05/14 at 00:20:24:


Avrukh's GM2, Wojo's weapon 1 and Bologan's books all are on the Catalan. There are holes in the repertoire in all of these, as I found out trying them in corr. chess. But they are a good starting point of course.

ErictheRed wrote on 07/16/13 at 22:37:45:


That is indeed one of the ideas I'm aware of.  One comparison would be that after 5. Bg2 Nc6 6. Qa4 cd 7. Nxd4 Qxd4 8. Bxc6+ Bd7 there's no Rd1.

Ty wrote on 07/16/13 at 01:39:55:


Surely 3. Nf3 is more normal.  It seems that on 3. g3 dc (maybe also on 3...c6 and 3...c5) it suits Black not to have Nf3 and ...Nf6 in.