mn wrote on 09/13/20 at 01:31:31:
Regarding what has changed, I think people used to meet the c3/Bd3/Ne2/Qc2 plan with ...g6 or ...h6, whereas now ...h5 has become popular.
I recently heard about ...h5 but had not understood the reason why it changes the evaluation of the position. Nevertheless, the game that
an ordinary chessplayer referenced was a clear illustration of why this move is necessary.
an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 09/13/20 at 03:10:38:
Yes, I think Kudrin - King was the model attacking game which put black off the opening for a long time. If memory serves, this game was in one of the
Trends in the Caro-Kann volumes, and I saw it again in
CHESS Monthly in 1996, with quite a pessimistic assessment for black.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1086790King played 9...g6 and got hammered. Since 9...h6 also runs into problems, the whole line was discarded. It looks daft to play ...h7-h5, to outward appearances a fatal loosening of the kingside. It's probably in the same category as white castling queenside in the Najdorf and then playing b2-b4. If it works, it works, that's all we can say.
It is interesting that once you see the alternative (h6 or g6 as in the Kudrin - King game) the move ...h5 makes a lot of sense.
I would love to take up 4...Nf6 and play it in OTB games given it seemingly involves less theory than 4...Bf5. That being said, what worries greatly is that White is the only one with a healthy majority and the possibility of creating a passed pawn. When trying out 4...Nf6 in blitz I had some challenging games against White's plan of simply pushing his majority c3-c4, d4-d5 etc. and I felt I had no good way of countering it.
Is this still fine for Black somehow? I would be very interested to know if 4...Nf6 is played regularly in correspondence games and what the verdict is there but unfortunately I do not have a correspondence database.
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4... Nf6 in the classical (Read 1577 times)
