I think it should be noted that this line was played in an AlphaZero-Stockfish game, which Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan annotated for their Game Changer YouTube channel (link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuu8mCOaiTs&t=209s). I've never looked at the line two deeply myself, but I would make three observations.
1) By this point there can be no serious doubting that Nepomniachtchi has spent considerable time preparing his Winawer, and the fact that Nakamura-Nepomniachtchi followed the course of AlphaZero-Stockfish for so long suggests that there are no clear improvements on Stockfish's play. Given that Nepomniachtchi blundered while still pretending to be in preparation we don't know exactly how much of the game he already had in his files, but I think we can be pretty sure that he at least had prepared the idea to exchange the light-squared bishops with 11... b6 12. Qd4 Ba6. From that point, at least going based on Stockfish at low depths, black doesn't seem to have much scope to avoid the position that arose after 13. Qd4 Bxf1 14. Kxf1 Nd7 15. h5 Rc8 16. h6 Qc4+ 17. Qxc4 Rxc4 18. Bg5 Rh8. From then it seems like white will be able to pretty much force the exchange sacrifice played in AlphaZero-Stockfish at one point or another with a sequence of Bf6 followed by Rh5 and Ng5. In the stem game I thought AlphaZero made it look like a pretty grim defence for black, but of course I could be mistaken about that. Notably both Svidler and Carlsen thought it looked like a very interesting idea on the live show, although of course they were basing that thought on intuition rather than deep analysis. The other question, at least for practical play, would be how much impact the timing of white's Bf6 followed by Ng5 changes the character of the position. Does black have to memorise a different concrete response for every seemingly slight variation on the idea just to hold a draw? If the answer is yes then this variation could just be untenable for black over the board.
2) While pretty much all the games so far have seen 11. Nf3 it's worth noting that 11. Ne2 is also a very interesting piece of move order trickery that anyone venturing the black side of the Winawer Poisoned Pawn will need to keep in mind. If black plays 11... Qxe5 then we immediately transpose back into the Huschenbeth-Naiditsch game, while if 11... Nbc6 then white has the option of playing 12. Qxc3 Bd7 13. f4, transposing to a position that arisen many times after the historical main move 10. Ne2 via a variety of move orders - 10... Nbc6 (or 10... dxc3 11. f4 Nbc6) 11. f4 Bd7 (or 11... dxc3 12. Qd3 Bd7) 12. Qd3 Bd7. I'm not really up to date here but last time I checked this line was supposed to be pretty bad for black. At least if recent ICCF games are anything to go by I would guess that this is still the case, with white scoring 73.5% in recent games from this position in my database and the highest rating of any black player being 2356.
3) It is probably not a coincidence that Nepomniachtchi had four games with 7. h4 before anyone played 7. Qg4 against him. According to another video on the Game Changer channel (link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7SdwCRisUs) AlphaZero likes this line for white even more than 7. Qg4. In these lines I have even less of an idea what's going on, but these lines would also annoy me as black. I suspect that any self-respecting Poisoned Pawn player would much rather play 10... cxd4 a la Caruana-Nepomniachtchi than 10... Rg8 but to me that line just feels like a clearly improved version for white. Compared to the Poisoned Pawn black is spending a full tempo on ...h6 while white all of white's moves seem very normal (Ne2, Rb1, h4-h5 etc.). In the game it looks like Caruana could have gotten a pretty big advantage with 17. Nb5, and I suspect Nepomniachtchi's decision to go back to 10... Rg8 in his later game against MVL might reflect that fact.
I understand that my post was pretty much the exact opposite of what fei-chang-ming requested in the OP, but I'd be pretty much lying if I said anything else. Whatever its theoretical standing, I wish you and Nepo best of luck with the Winawer Poisoned Pawn - it's such an exciting line that I really hope it has a bright future.
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Poisoned Pawn, Huschenbeth's 10 Qd3 (Read 2205 times)
