Vass wrote on 02/23/13 at 15:47:11:


That is annoying!  It seems like it forces White to trade on Bxc6 to avoid a bad position: 6. d3 g4  7. Bxc6 followed by 8. Nbd2 regardless of how Black recaptures.

emary wrote on 02/23/13 at 08:54:20:


4...f5? is just awful, White simply plays 5. exf5 and Black does not have the thematic ...e4 due to White's Qe2, whereas on 5...Bxf5 White's thematic 6. d4 is even stronger than usual because of Qe2.

kylemeister wrote on 02/21/13 at 05:15:25:


Yeah ...b6, ...Rb8 were rather puzzling -- it usually doesn't play such a succession of odd moves.  And it definitely shouldn't have let me get my pawns on e5 and d4.

Today when faced with the Steinitz Defense 3...d6, despite knowing of course that 4. d4 is what is called for, I am never especially happy (or unhappy for that matter) with the position that I get as White after 4...Bd7 -- it's just not to my taste. 

Then 4. Qe2!? dawned on me, one point of which is if Black plays 4...Nf6?! he gets move-ordered into an inferior line of the Berlin after White plays 5. d4.  An online correspondence game, has proceeded in just this manner, so the precise move order is now moot: it's Berlin Defense, and still in book, albeit pretty unfavorable for Black, so I am happy about that.

I also decided to try it out against my 15+ year old engine (Fritz2.5.1) on my 5-year old laptop, where I only give it 5 seconds, but I take all the time I need (this way I can draw it about every 3 or 4 times).  Both games saw the machine play 4...Bd7 and in the first I played pretty poorly and got a bad position after setting up a broad pawn center with c3 and d4.

In my second game I set up the little center with c3 and d3 and did much better.  I've "adjourned" in a position where I have a queen and a pawn for 3 minor pieces as the result of an attack where I could have had a draw by repetition in a couple of different ways.



Anyway, am interested in if anybody finds the possibility of 4. Qe2 of value -- I've checked chesslive.de and there are only 5 games that do not transpose to the Berlin, none of them master quality AFAIK, so what I'm submitting may be the best example to date, though not especially great I realize.  I've also fed this into my other better engine (Deep Fritz 13) on my other newer (2-year old, double-core, 64-bit) laptop, and besides 4...Nf6 and 4...Bd7 it's top 5 suggestions in order (with a White response for what it's worth) are:

4...Nge7  5. d3
4...g6  5. d4
4...Be7  5. d4
4...Bg4  5. Nc3
4...a6  5. Bxc6