Stigma wrote on 12/28/20 at 05:56:54:
I'm a bit worried that I may now have to take time to learn one of the absolute main lines (either 4.Nf3 or 4.Bf4 Nc6 5.Nf3 Bb4+ 6.Nc3, plus an answer to 4.Bf4 g5!?) against a defence I face so rarely.
In the TCEC S17 Superfinal, both Leela and SF independently came up with a rather fresh line vs the Budapest:
4.e3 Nxe5 5.f4!?
https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/tcec-season-17-superfinal-2020/1/1...https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/tcec-season-17-superfinal-2020/1/1...Both games ended in draws, but this seems to me to be a good mixture of "simple, understandable play" (either keep your center stable + develop, or throw the kingside up the board), with "direct refutation attempt" (after all, the two strongest engines both decided that they'd like to play those moves in a long TC game), and "relatively unknown; Black is unlikely to find/know the critical moves" (never seen this outside of TCEC, gamecount on Lichess is also still relatively small).
It is similar in spirit to 4.e4 Nxe5 5.f4, but with the differences that:
- The King is substantially safer; eg ..Bb4+ can often/easily be answered with Kf2; which you would be less happy about with the pawn on e4
- The center is a lot more stable, as we havent advanced our pawns quite as far, and the f4 pawn remains defended
- Better control over the dark squares, in particular the d4 one
- The b1-h7 diagonal remains open, allowing us to play Bd3 at an opportune moment, potentially with Ng5 to follow
Some sample lines (not critical by Black, but to get some ideas across):
5..Ng6 6.h4!? h5 (6..Nxh4 7.Nc3 just normal development with e4,Be3,Nge2,etc and ask Black how happy they are about spending 2 tempi on opening up your h-file) 7.Nf3 Be7 8.Ng5 d6 9.Qd5 0-0 10.Be2 Bg4 11.Bxg4 hxg4 12.Nc3 c6 13.Qd3 (with Bd2,0-0-0,h5 etc coming next, while it's not quite clear what Black is doing)
5..Nec6 6.Nf3 g6 7.Bd2 Bg7 8.Bc3 0-0 9.h4 h5 10.g4! (..hxg4?? 11.Ng5+-); White is rolling, Black.. isn't
the "mainline" in the Lichess DB for players rated 2200+ (no Bullet) goes
5..Nec6 6.Nf3 Bc5 7.Nc3 0-0 8.Bd3 Re8, and here 9.Bxh7! is already completely winning.
E: I dont have a clue what Plichta gives against this, or whether it's even covered in the course