Chess to Enjoy / Entertainment
The Openings Black Hole When openings disappear from tournaments, where do they go?
By GM ANDY SOLTIS
IN ONE OF GARRY KASPAROV’S REVEAL- ing books about his title matches with Anatoly Karpov, he analyzed the Petroff Defense (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6). After 3. d4 exd4 4. e5 Ne4 he mentioned the move 5. Qe2.
5…. Nc5 6. Nxd4 Nc6 7. Be3 Nxd4 8. Bxd4 Ne6 9. Bc3 Be7 10. Nd2 0-0 11. 0-0-0
If you check out databases, you might
find the game “Chaplin-Reshevsky, New York, 1923.” It went 11. Ne4 d5 12. 0-0- 0? Bd7 13. Ng3 (not 13. Rxd5 Nf4) 13. ... c5 14. Bd2 b5 15. Nf5 d4 and Black won. Yes, that Chaplin is Charlie. And, no,
it’s almost certainly a hoax game that was never played.
11. ... d5 12. exd6 e.p. Qxd6 13. Nf3 Qf4+ 14. Kb1 Bd6 15. g3 Qa4 16. Bg2 Bd7 17. Ne5 Bb5 18. Qh5 f6 19. Bd5! Rae8 20. Ng4 Bc6 21. Rd4 Qb5 22. a4 Qc5 23. Rhd1 Bxd5 24. Rxd5 Qc6 25. Qh4 Nc5? 26. Nxf6+! gxf6? 27. Rg5+!
In some cases, it’s because they were deemed, fairly or unfairly, to have been refuted. Frank Marshall’s best-known gambit in the Ruy Lopez (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. 0-0 Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 0-0 8. c3 and now 8. ... d5!? 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Nxe5 Nxe5 11. Rxe5) fell into that category. Marshall introduced it to master chess
against Jose Capablanca in 1918, with 11. ... Nf6, and lost a game that became instantly famous. But it was a bad rap. Marshall revived the gambit with 11. ... c6! nearly 20 years later in his best games collection and showed it was quite good. Yet the Marshall variation inexplicably
remained in the black hole until more than 20 years after that. This strange phenomenon continues
BLACK TO PLAY
On e2 the queen snarls White’s devel- opment a bit. But it forces Black to make a decision about his attacked knight. This “eccentric” move “has long been
confined to the past,” Kasparov wrote. This sounds like 5. Qe2 was refuted a century ago. Indeed, the one example Kasparov cited
was ancient—5. … Bb4+ 6. Kd1 d5 7. exd6 e.p. f5, Wilhelm Steinitz-Harry Nelson Pillsbury, St. Petersburg, 1895-96. Kas- parov said the position offered equal chances. (White had the better endgame of the eventual draw.) What Kasparov didn’t say is that 5. Qe2
was revived nearly 70 years after the Steinitz game—by an obscure figure named Bobby Fischer. Fischer’s impressive wins with it drew a lot of attention to the queen move … until it was forgotten all over again. One website shows only 11 examples
of 5. Qe2 that were played since 1990— and White scored 10 wins and a draw. That’s an extraordinary record for any opening variation. Among the wins was GM Johnny Hector-GM Arturs Neiksans, Oslo, 2008, which went:
16 November 2014 | Chess Life Now on 27. ... fxg5 White mates with
28. Qxg5+ Kf7 29. Qf6+ and on 27 … Kh8 he does it with 28. Qh6!. The game went:
27. ... Kf7 28. Qxh7+ Ke6 29. Re1+ Be5 30. Bxe5 fxg5 31. Bg7+ Kd5?! 32. c4+ Kxc4 33. Qc2+ Kb4 34. Bc3+ Kc4 35. Ba5+ Kd4 36. Qc3+ Kd5 37. Qd2+, Black resigned.
You would think that with a track record
like 10½-½ and games like this, 5. Qe2 would be making another comeback in our era of Petroff popularity. It hasn’t. It’s hard to find an opening
book published in the last 20 years that even mentions the queen move. And, strangely, that is not unusual.
Minor opening variations like 5. Qe2, as well as major lines and even whole open- ings periodically vanish, as if they’ve been sucked into some black hole of opening theory.
today. Openings such as the Bishop’s Opening (1. e4 e5 2. Bc4), the Stonewall Variation of the Dutch Defense (1. d4 f5 and an early ... d5), and the Bird’s Defense to the Ruy Lopez (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nd4) were considered perfectly legit- imate 20 years ago and were played by elite grandmasters. But not now. They weren’t discredited. They just disappeared. Other pop variations of the 1990s are
played much less frequently today—but again, for no good reason. These include variations with 3. Bb5(+) in the Sicilian Defense (after 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 or 2. ... Nc6), the Evans Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4), the Leningrad Dutch (… g6/… Bg7 after 1. d4 f5), the Czech Defense (1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 c6) and the more convoluted lines such as the Velimirovic Attack in the Sicilian. So why should you care what the mas-
ters play? Because any amateur who wants to learn a new opening needs books, videos or Internet sites that analyze that opening. But those sources concentrate on the currently trendy lines. Where do you go to learn about an opening that got sucked into a black hole?
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