I just received an email from modern-chess.com informing me that the 60% off sale has been extended to the end of the week.

Stigma wrote on 03/31/23 at 18:43:26:
 


Hi, 

maybe a 1.c4 move-order with 1.d4 openings in mind could help: 
    
    1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.d4 you want to reach. 
    
    1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3   
           (Marin: Meeting 2...e6, 2...d5 and 2...c5 
                                             agressively - Modern Chess)   
    
    1.c4 c6 2.Nf3 (FM Or Cohen and GM Arnaudov - Modern Chess)   
    
    1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Nf3 and now it is not so easy to avoid 3...Nc6. 
         After 3...Nc6 White(!) chooses the line, among others 
    a) The solid 4.e3  (Georgiev/Semkov: The Modern English - Chess Stars)
                               (Sielecki: LTR 1.Nf3 and 1.c4, Chessable)
    b) 4.d3     (Georgiev/Semkov: The Modern English, Chess Stars
    c) 4.e4 
           (Marin: Complete Repertoire for White 
            after 1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 - Modern Chess)   

   1.c4 c5 2.Nf3 Nf6 (Nc6) 3.d4 
           (Marin: Symmetrical English with 3.d4 - Modern Chess) 
           (Sielecki and Georgiev/Semkov prefer 1.c4 c5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3)   
            
             

Nernstian59 wrote on 04/09/23 at 19:23:21:

My sample is indeed the orange one. What Amazon writes certainly is inaccurate. The 1964 version is the original one, not the translated and reworked version. Again I quote BH Woods:

- The production of an English version of Ludek Pachman;s "Geschlossene Spiele: Indische Verteidigungen u.a."(Berlin, 1967 ....."

Obviously the 1964 book also was in German, when Pachman still supported the Czech communist regime.

The German edition Kylemeister talks about is from the 1980's and done by GM Pachman himself.

Thanks to MNb for that tidbit on the likely publication date of Woods' version of Pachman's Queen's Gambit. I attempted to get more information with a Google search and found that several online book dealers are selling what appears to a hardcover edition of the book.  I wasn't aware that such a version of the book existed. The images posted by a couple sellers show that this volume has the same appearance as Woods' other Pachman hardcovers. There's no book jacket, and the title and author are printed in gilt lettering on the spine. The only difference is in the color of the covers: Queen's Gambit is green, Semi-Open Chess is blue, and Indian Systems is orange. Amazon and a few of the other online sellers give a publication date of 1964 for the Queen's Gambit hardcover. I'm not sure if this is accurate since my paperback edition cites a few 1965 games, including from the Larsen-Ivkov Candidates quarterfinal match of 1965. At any rate, I don't see anything contrary to the chronology indicated by MNb. The paperback still seems to be an earlier publication than Indian Systems since there's nothing in the paperback as recent as the 1970s events mentioned in the preface in Indian Systems.

kylemeister wrote on 04/05/23 at 23:10:03:

kylemeister - That's an excellent point about 13...Nxf6 being played much more frequently than 13...Qxf6.  A search of MegaBase finds about 190 games with the position after 12.Ne4 exd4 13.Nf6+, and 13...Nxf6 is played about three times more often than 13...Qxf6.  And as you point out, those playing 13...Nxf6 include some very prominent names.  A quick scan of those who chose 13...Qxf6 instead doesn't appear to turn up such luminaries; Pachman might be the biggest name that I recognize.

kylemeister wrote on 04/05/23 at 23:10:03:

I dug out my copy of Pachman and found that its main choice was 13...Nxf6, with 13...Qxf6 covered in a side note, even though Pachman himself had played it in that game against Furman.  That note with 13...Qxf6 then goes on with 14.Qxd4 Qxd4 15.Nxd4 with White standing somewhat better, citing the Gligoric-Filip game you mentioned in Reply #5. The book's main line analysis after 13...Nxf6 goes 14.Qxd4 Qe7 15.Qe5 Re8! when "White has only a minimal advantage". There doesn't seem to be nonsense here.

My copy of Pachman is a white paperback with "Queen's Gambit by Ludek Pachman" printed in blue on the front cover and nothing on the spine.  It's in English with descriptive notation.  While no publisher or date of publication is given anywhere, I strongly suspect the book was published by BH Wood through his company, Chess Ltd, since the typography and layout are the same as in Woods' versions of Pachman's Indian Systems and Semi-Open Chess, where the publisher and date are shown. Someone once told me that this Queen's Gambit book doesn't reveal its publisher since it was an unauthorized translation of Das Damengambit, which you referred to in Reply #8.

In the editor's preface in Indian Systems, Wood wrote about the process of translating Pachman's original book from German to English and from algebraic to descriptive.  A team of young assistants (including familiar names such as Robert Bellin and Peter Griffiths) also checked the variations against recent chess literature and updated where needed.  Assuming this process was also used on the Queen's Gambit book, it seems plausible that it included cleaning up obvious errors such as the "nonsense" you encountered. That might explain why I'm not seeing it in the English translation.  

kylemeister - That Yusupov game was a nice find. I do wonder if Papaioannou looked at it since Yusupov's play seems like a solid counter to the recommended approach of burying the bishop. Perhaps he didn't devote as much time to 13....Nxf6 since 13...Qxf6 14.Qxd4 was his main line, which continues with 14...Qxd4. This capture seems a bit compliant since 15.Nxd4 brings the knight to a good square.  The line continues with Black making small errors and eventually getting squeezed. Stockfish likes 14...Re8 or 14...a5 (both =). 

Although it's possible to find multiple equalizers with engine assistance, Papaioannou's point could be that even though there's objective equality, Black must play with some accuracy, while White can grind away with natural moves in a risk-free situation.

kylemeister wrote on 04/01/23 at 14:25:19:

kylemeister - Your post inspired me to dig out one of my old go-to QGD references, Samarian's Queen's Gambit Declined. It also cited the Gligoric-Filip game in its analysis of 13...Qxf6, but after 13...Nxf6, Samarian only covered 14.Nxd4.

The equalizing line 13...Nxf6 14. Qxd4 Bg4 you gave is also mentioned in Declining the Queen's Gambit by John Cox. Papaioannou goes deeper in his analysis with 15.Qxd8 Raxd8 16.Ne5. He then gives as a possible continuation 16...Bh5 17.f4 Nd7 18.Nxd7 Rxd7 19.h3 with an evaluation of +/= because of the threat of g2-g4 followed by f4-f5. If Stockfish could talk, it would apparently say, "Bring it on!" since its analysis goes 19...Rfd8 20.g4 Bg6 21.f5 Bh7, evaluating this position as = despite the bishop being buried on h7. Lc0 and Dragon 3 also give =, so it's not a Stockfish quirk. Maybe this is one of those positions that a human would find difficult to handle in an OTB game, but it does seem like Black's doubled rooks hold everything together while he proceeds to free himself via ...Kf8, ...Bg8, and ...f6. In fact, this sequence is given in Chess Stars' Play 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6! by Alexei Kornev. He cites the correspondence game Husemann-Keevil, LSS 2012, which transposed to the position after 21...Bh7 via 17.h3 and 19.f4.

Nernstian59 wrote on 04/01/23 at 02:38:18:

I noticed that after 8...c6 9.Bd3 Nd7 10.O-O dc4 11.Bxc4 e5 he goes not with 12. h3 (as played e.g. between Kasparov and Karpov in the eighties), but with 12.Ne4. That reminded me of a game Gligoric-Filip 1965 (1-0), used by Drazen Marovic in his Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess. After 12...ed4 13. Nxf6+ Filip played 13...Qxf6; Marovic gave 13...Nxf6 14. Qxd4 Bg4 as better and equalizing, as did Filip in the first edition of ECO 25 years earlier. (After 15. Qf4 Filip gave 15...Re8 as in Bouwmeester-Portisch 1966; the 2004 edition of ECO also gave 15...Bxf3 16. Qxf3 Qd2 as in Dorfman-Lputian 1984 as leading to equality.)