The Latest Developments - February 2003
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Hi everyone, I hope you are all enjoying Chesspublishing.com, welcome to the February Flank Openings update! TonyK |
To download the February '03 Flank Openings games directly in PGN form click here: 
English Opening
1...e5
[A25]: On the Forum recently garrubal mentions the Three Knights System with 4...Bb4, and asks: «what if Black decides to play ...Nxd5 followed by ...Nb4 earlier?»
            
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quoting the recent game Watson, J - Enkhbat, T, so I have analysed this game, and pointed-out both why the line is very good for White, and where John Watson went wrong.
1...c5
[A31]: In the pawn-sac line, we have only considered 8 e3 up to now, but in Ramirez,A - Yurtaev,L we can see that 8 g3 is also possible:
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and although White gets hammered, it is not the fault of his eighth move.
1...Nf6 & others
[A16]: Zvjaginsev,V - Najer,E features another look at one of Piket's sharp attempts to blast the Pseudo-Grunfeld, 5 h4!?.
[A17]: Once again on the Flank Openings Forum (which you can click to directly using the link above and to the right) kiwi posed the question: «What do people think of Vadim's 4th move?» in the game Zvjaginsev,V - Riazantsev,A. We have already looked at this a number of times, of course, but 4 g4!? seems as vibrant as ever.
[A17]: Just to show that the old mainline with 4 Qc2 is still worth playing, in Gustafsson,J - Khalifman,A the young German hope (yes, despite his Scandinavian-sounding name) makes his bishops count in a demonstration of tactical pyrotechnics.
Réti
[A07]: 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 g6 3 Bf4 Bg7 4 e3 0-0 5 h3 d6 6 Be2 Nfd7!? is a line that has given me good results as Black, and I have often wondered about its merits with a tempo more, and so when I saw the game Cornette,M - Payen,A, involving 6 Nfd2!?:
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I decided to have a closer look.
Larsen's Opening
[A06]: In Arvind,S - Ramesh,R White seems to be doing nothing in particular in the opening, and then produces a mating attack out of clear, blue sky!
1 g3 - the Flexible Variation
[A00]: I have neglected this section for a long time, simply because I couldn't find any top-class games where White ventured 1 g3 that didn't transpose into something else! So, when I saw the game Azmaiparashvili,Z - Ortega,L I couldn't resist. Strangely enough, after the opening moves this still transposes into a line of the Caro-Kann!
e-mails
Please feel free to share any of your thoughts with me, whatever they are, suggestions, criticisms (just the polite ones, please), etc. Drop me a line at the Flank Openings Forum, or directly to tonykosten@chesspublishing.com
Till next month, Tony K