IsaVulpes wrote on 02/04/18 at 03:15:21:



Yeah the more I look at this, the more I think that it's better to just allow a Rossolimo, even if it is not the type of position a Sveshnikov player is looking for.

6 Nxc6 I think would be the downside. 6 Be2!? isn't easy either.

CarriedbyGg wrote on 02/01/18 at 07:38:24:
Not me. The strong players I know are not at all afraid of irrational positions, and have confidence in their own preparations. Sometimes they will avoid a theoretical battle, most times they will demand to be shown. To me it's simple logic that after 6.Bh4 dxc4 black stands better. Demonstrating that is beyond my ability, but theory marches on.

Stigma wrote on 02/01/18 at 06:29:31:


You're probably right, though when I do see a Sicilian, it tends to be with 2...d6, heading for a Najdorf, rather than 2...Nc6. Black players probably know that if they play 2...Nc6 they will get a Rossolimo, so they don't bother. 

I play both the Najdorf and the Sveshnikov, and have trouble deciding which one I really want as my main defence to 1.e4. The deciding factor could be the number of Bb5 Sicilians I get after my second move. I definitely see more Rossolimos than Moscows, but fortunately most of the time I get an Open Sicilian, which motivates me to continue playing and studying these openings. That could change though. 

Regarding 1...e5 though, I took it up again for some time last year, reverting to the Zaitsev as my weapon against the Ruy, but I hardly ever got it in an actual game, and when I did, it was usually not a critical line. I was a bit dissapointed in the number of slow Ruys and Italians I was getting, which is probably one factor that pushed me back to playing the Sicilian most of the time. My point here is that it seems as though trends at the top are trickling down to club level, though perhaps it has always been that way. 

Regarding the Semi-Slav, I often wonder why I play it at all considering that almost half my games after 1...d5 are some kind of d-pawn system (usually the London), and even within the Semi-Slav my opponents often dodge the most critical lines (so I end up studying a lot for nothing). I sometimes think that I should just play the Dutch exclusively to ensure an interesting game. Again, this seems to be a result of the London being popular at the top, because some years ago, I hardly saw it at all. 

These trends at the top, besides being ways to avoid ultra-solid defences like the Berlin, perhaps also reflect a growing need for players to not take risks, especially with White. As chess continues to evolve, I feel more and more like White players first of all try to ensure they cannot lose, and only then try to win (hence a preference for the London over the Anti-Moscow Gambit). 

Thoughts? 

BigTy wrote on 02/01/18 at 03:11:24:

Maybe you're aware of this, but in both cases it may be largely White that's avoiding these in OTB play. The Rossolimo has been all the rage for several years, and it's well-known that the main point of that is to avoid the Sveshnikov. So the situation is similar to the Marshall Gambit and the Berlin, or whatever other Ruy line the top players are avoiding when they're all playing the Italian and slow Spanish lines these days: These defences are so strong they have become victims of their own success. The Najdorf still has strong defenders like MVL and is seen now and then; the difference there is White players still seem to think it's worth going into instead of avoiding it with some Anti-Sicilian.

For the sharper Semi-Slav lines I'm not sure, but it could be a combination of things. The status of calmer White ways to avoid them, like the Catalan, the Slow Slav, the Exchange Slav and even the London system and the Réti have all improved in the last decade. 

The same is also true of some of Black's alternatives as a "partner defence" to the Nimzo-Indian, like the Queen's Gambit Declined and the Ragozin. The Chebanenko Slav as a calm alternative in the Slav main line also had its time in the sun, but I think I see it less often these days.

it's great that there are so many active people here!

Yes, that's the real difference - not 1 e4 vs d4 but lots of really, really slow positions. Computers of course.

There hasn't been a World Champion who strongly preferred playing 1.e4 since the reigns of Fischer and Karpov, while both Karpov and Kasparov made statements about switching their emphasis to 1.d4. The Berlin Wall was a bombshell in 2000 that Kasparov said created a new era in opening theory. It's an interesting question whether the popularity of 1.e4 has actually diminished amidst changing attitudes.

I think it depends on how you cut the data. I looked at a cutoff at the decade in Megabase and found that among games with both players 2500+, 1.e4 (ECO B00-C99) accounted for 45.3% of games 2001-2010, but only 40.1% of games 2011-2017.  Yet overall, it doesn't seem like a very important quantitative shift. The Berlin Wall definitely changed the psychology of 1.e4 in 2000, but after investigating a little it seems not the proportions. Keano's statistics about last year are also very clear in the other direction. 

So perhaps we should separate the issues of the statistical popularity of 1.e4 from issues of its changing perceived nature.  After all, whatever the lumped statistics say, the openings are finely-tuned tools that should be and are used differently in different situations and by different players. For example, the most telling king's-pawn moment in the recent world championship match occurred when Carlsen, with White, was down by a point with only three classical games left. He chose 1.e4. Perhaps what  he then got was what he expected and wanted--a grind.