ErictheRed wrote on 02/11/14 at 18:03:42:


Yes, I was going to comment on that as I feel that a game in the Short system develops a lot differently than with other (sharp) systems in the C-K Advance.

I would pick the Berlin as the most important development for the 00s, and as runner-up, the d5 pawn sac in the 4. g3 QID.

In my beloved Caro-Kann: the kingside castling lines in the Classical was the most important development for the 00s, this is not a new concept but was taken to an astonishingly deeper theoretical level. These lines really boosted the popularity of the Caro-Kann in general. I do not rate the development of other lines (e.g. Short system, panov ...g6) as important as this.

A few months ago an opponent + 2500 rated played against me 1.Nf3 f5 2.b4!? and after only 4 moves we had an original position. I wrote last week an article about it: http://chess-brabo.blogspot.be/2014/02/the-lucky-one.html

I just used this thread in my latest blogarticle as body for some analysis about the Rauzer with g6.
For Dutch : http://schaken-brabo.blogspot.be/2013/10/revolutie-in-het-millennium.html
For English: http://chess-brabo.blogspot.be/2013/10/revolution-in-millenium.html

This thread has been very interesting, especially TN's response. I'd love to see a similar list for every decade since 1900. I'm getting a bit of a sense of the evolution of opening theory by reading My Great Predecessors in order but Kasparov doesn't usually call a lot of attention to the larger trends in opening fashion.

I think the real revolution in the last thirteen years is not so much the emergence or renewal of a particular system but a complete change in approach by both colours. In the 1990s it was accepted by most that White should emerge with a small edge with best play out of the opening, but computers have shown many new defensive resources and greatly expanded the number of playable variations. It's not at all clear what White's best try for an advantage is with White: after 1.e4 the Berlin Wall, Marshall, Najdorf, Sveshnikov, Caro-Kann and French have proved incredibly hard for White to even press for an objective advantage against, while against 1.d4 the Grunfeld, Slav and Nimzo-Indian have emerged as openings where even a symbolic edge with White is extremely hard to achieve. For this reason both 1.Nf3 and 1.c4 have risen to equal respectability with 1.d4 and 1.e4.

The player most responsible for this revolution is Kramnik - in a number of Black openings he came up not just with new ideas and new plans, but a completely different way of playing with the Black pieces - using extremely detailed preparation to construct a 'fortress' to achieve a draw, or even win if the opponent overpresses. This in turn led to the revolution about five years ago of elite players abandoning their fight for a real advantage with the White pieces in favour of reaching a tense, strategically rich position where a long fight was guaranteed, and the better player would maximise their chances of success. There are tons of examples of this in practice but the d3 Ruy Lopez is one of the most obvious examples of this approach. This approach itself is as old as chess itself, but Carlsen was probably the first elite Grandmaster to fully appreciate the importance of this method and his successes definitely contributed to the popularity of it at all levels.

So, what does the future hold for chess opening theory?

In the future I think we'll see both sides continuing to use this approach of aiming for a long fight with tension in the position, but the nature of this struggle will change. There are still a gigantic number of new plans that haven't received much practical or theoretical attention, but as this number decreases, I think a new approach of finding a little-known but interesting continuation will become a lot more popular. This trend is already becoming popular among some strong players but by 2020 I think this will be the dominant approach at the elite level. It won't totally surprise me if continuations such as 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Be2 or 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 h6 become popular ways of avoiding the increasing theoretical workload in favour of reaching a struggle.

There is also the possibility of chess being solved by a 32-man tablebase. It is assumed that this will kill the game of chess but I highly doubt this as no human being would be able to remember the entire tablebase. Additionally, this hypertheoretical approach does not pay any attention to the practical side of chess and will not tell you how easy the position is to play for either side, or how difficult the route to a draw for the inferior side is. Even memorising all of the opening theory in a 32-man tablebase would be nearly impossible. Chess will always have a future and be immortal, but I do not see a significant change in today's approach occurring. If a player tries to win out of the opening, the opponent will just deviate with some sideline and we will still have a real game of chess.

And for the record, I predict that the main line of 2020 will be 1.c4. See you here in seven years!

Edit: Corrected a typo.

1. Carlsen's way of playing an early d3 in the Ruy Lopez (obviously played before, but before him, would you have expected that as regular guest at the Super-GM level?). Or perhaps it is just a symptom of world-class players trying to play chess rather than overdo the opening preparation, while before the trend sometimes seemed to be the other way around?
2. Lots of rather concrete stuff like 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 Nbd7 7. f4 e5 8. Nf5 Qb6 in the Najdorf, which looks weird for black, but somehow just works.
3. How the Sicilian Taimanov has risen in  popularity.
4. The discovery of 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 0-0 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.Qxc3 d5! in the Nimzo-Indian.
5. Rise (more in the 90s - see e.g. its use in Kasparov - Anand) and fall of the Scandinavian, particularly of the 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5 4.d4 c6 5.Bc4 Bf5 variant.
6. In the aforementioned Modern Benoni, in particular the discovery of new ways of playing the b5 line vs. the MML.
7. Lots of great new ideas in the semi-slav.

I was reading Kasparov's "Revolution in the 70s" recently and wondered: what would a book called "Revolution in the 00s" talk about? I think there's no question that the extraordinary increase in strength of chess software over the last decade and its global availability has allowed us to reexamine every nook and cranny of opening theory, and I wonder what the most significant findings have been so far. I don't follow the entire spectrum of theory (I play 1.d4), nor was I watching opening developments in the 90s, so my perspective is extremely limited. Nevertheless I did come up with the following things (in no particular order):

1. The rise of 1.d4 as White's first move of choice at top level.
2. Kramnik's construction of the Berlin Wall.
3. The death (Kramnik-Kasparov) and rebirth (Anand-Gelfand) of the Grunfeld.
4. The explosion in popularity of the Catalan.
5. The emergence of the Slow Slav (4.e3) as a serious opening.
6. The popularization of the Anti-Moscow Gambit.
7. The discovery of White's dynamic chances against the Queen's Indian. (Topalov's games, and especially the 4.g3 Ba6 5.Qc2 Bb7 6.Bg2 c5 7.d5 sacrifice)
8. The revival of the Modern Benoni.
9. The revival of the Tarrasch. (and more recently, the Semi-Tarrasch)
10. The establishment of the MacCutcheon as the main line of the Classical French.
11. The establishment of the Advance as White's main weapon against the Caro-Kann.
12. The development of systems involving ...a6 in the Pirc, Modern and the Dragon.
13. The discovery that various gambits are more playable than previously thought. (Albin, Blumenfeld, Schara-Hennig, Morra, Schliemann, etc.; and people thought computers were going to kill gambit play)

Now it's your turn! Notice I haven't said anything about the Sicilian, since I don't really know what "revolutionary" things happened after the English Attack and Rossolimo exploded in popularity in the 90s (or was the latter a more recent phenomenon? You tell me.)

Have fun