Ever since picking up chess again a few years ago I have been playing easy to learn openings that require little time to study. Although this allowed me to be competitive fairly quickly, it now works against me in the club competition. It is not that hard for an opponent to come up with an effective line against me since they know I have tittle more to bring to the table than the Bishop's opening or the Grand Prix Attack with white and the Caro Kann or Budapest Gambit with black. Lately especially the Bishop's opening has given me reason to study something more effective. I seem to get nothing out of that opening apart from being in "known" territory, so I decided to start playing 1.e4 - e5 as the majority of players does. According to the chess.com database that means studying the Ruy Lopez, which is quite a task. And not playing the bishop's opening anymore means dealing with some openings I did not have to face the last couple of years.

Last week the problem of having to play new stuff became rather concrete as - based on prior line-ups in the Belgian Interclub competition - I was sure I would have to play white against a very talented youngster of whom I knew he plays the Petroff nearly exclusively against 1. e4 and 2. Nf3. How I knew? The kid was kind enough to add both his first and last name to his chess.com profile . New repertoire choices come with hard work, so instead of opting to go for the Bishop's opening one final time, I decided to go look for a simple line to play against the Petroff that would give me good chances to play for a win, without spending too much time, I only had an afternoon.

As happens so often, in the end I did not play the guy I thought I'd be playing so somehow I wasted a beautiful Saturday behind my PC and books. When looking back, I do remember being rather happy with the stuff I studied though, so I decided to share the line in this blog. It's definitely a lazy player's choice, but I think the line offers fun play against an opening that is known for being one of the most solid at black's disposal. Here we go:

A lazy club player's repertoire - 5. Nc3 against the Petroff!

The first four moves of the Petroff are usually 1.e4 - e5, 2. Nf3 - Nf6, 3. Nxe5 - d6, 4. Nf3 - Nxe4 when white typically follows up with d4 followed by a huge heap of theory we'll gladly leave to the black player to study in more detail. That is, after he finishes his work on the other main line with 3. d4 and some of the other early deviations white has at his disposal like the Cochrane gambit. When looking for my way to play against the Petroff I briefly went through the new book on the Petroff by Sakaev. Even though my chess strength doesn't qualify me to give an opinion on the quality of the analysis, the book is very well written, and I am sure it is a must for every Petroff fan. It lulled me to sleep though since I couldn't find any lazy ways to fight this opening. Until I got to the penultimate chapter of the book.There we see the introduction of 5. Nc3 with the comments "In the last few years this line has become tremendously popular, which is not surprising, because black often faces difficulties". Now let's go find out what these difficulties are! 

My first thought was that I would hate to study a whole book of 240 pages only to find out that the best part is hidden in the last 2 chapters! Well, THE last chapter to be more precise, since in chapter 28 we get introduced to a non critical line for white, in chapter 29 we get our preferred line going. It immediately got my attention - if my opponent ever got to this chapter, chapeau, if not - white will have all the fun.

After 5. Nc3 the best move for black is to take on c3 with 5.... Nxc3. another option could be to play Nf6 but that seems to be a waste of time (Mr Sakaev agrees!). After 5.... Nxc3 we take back with the d-pawn 6. dxc3, which allows quick piece development and keeps the pawn structure intact. Black plays 6.... Be7 in most cases since 6.... d5 is met with 7. c4 undoubling the pawns, and 6.... Bg4 runs into 7. h3 - Bh5, 8. Qd5 - Bxf3 (forced unless black does not mind us taking pawn b7), 9. Qxf3 and we have a lead in development and the bishop pair.  The move 6....Nc6 most likely runs down to our "main line".

After 6.... Be7 we play 7. Be3 which brings us to the last chapter of Sakaev's book, a chapter he starts with "I think this is the most dangerous move for black to face". How nice . We're playing something simple and it is considered dangerous. This position gives black two choices - it should be clear to him now that white is planning to castle long, so castling short will mean facing an attack of white's kingside pawns, which is exactly why this variation is so cool. Let's have a look what happens when black "chickens out" and goes for castling long himself.

Black's move in the Chicken variation, which actually happens to be the old main line, is 7.... Nc6.

This move is aimed at equalizing rather than putting up a fight, and has to be taken seriously since it is played most often in the chess.com database. 8. Qd2 is our move in this case, continuing the plan of castling long while keeping all options open. Black plays 8.... Be6 next if he is serious about castling long, after which we play 9. 0-0-0. Taking on a2 is not possible due to b3 so the logical follow up is 9.... Qd7 (diagram). Here statistics start to favour white and the choice is between 10. Kb1 and 10. h4. When I had to decide which move to pick I decided to go for 10. Kb1. After all, pawn a2 will need protection in the long run and I didn't really see the point of attacking the kingside before black has castled there. We're actually still hopeful that black goes 0-0 here! People a bit smarter than us (Peter Leko  in this case) went 10.h4 here with the aim of 10.... 0-0-0, 11. Ng5 - Bxg5, 12. hxg5 after which white's pawn structure is improved. Vugar Gashimov fell for that, but since we are dealing with amateur opposition I am sure our opponent will play 10.... h6 here. 10. Kb1 sets a small trap too. If black routinely carries out his queenside castling plan, he'll be a pawn down after 11. Nd4 - Nxd4, 12. Qd4 taking aim at pawn a7 and g7 at the same time. After 10. Kb1 black plays 11.... a6 in most cases, but it is white who ends the opening with the bishop pair advantage and the easier game after 12. Ng5. See for instance Kramnik - Adams: http://www.chess.com/games/view.html?id=1364675

Instead of 11.... a6, Sakaev promoted 10.... Bf6 as the choice for black. White can play 11. Bg5 - Qe7 (to avoid a crippled pawn structure - Bxg5 was played as well but seems inconsistent) 12. Bb5 - 0-0 (unpinning the knight but moving the king in the direction we want black to!) 13. h4 - h6, 14. Bxc6 - bxc6 which promises us a fun game after all. 

Well, since there are not that many GM games played in this variation yet statistics don't help us much. I'm not sure white does have a big advantage here, but it seems that you can reach a comfortable position without knowing too much theory in these lines.

Now let's forget about black wanting to castle queenside and spoil our fun..! In a perfect world, black would go 7.... 0-0 immediately, giving us exactly what we want. This perfect world exists if you have to believe "Chess opening explained for white" by Roman Dzindzichashvili since in his book 7.... Nc6 followed by queenside castling is not represented at all . After 0-0 white can play 8. Qd2 with the idea of 0-0-0 after which black has two main moves that in most cases boil down to the same, 8.... Nc6 and 8.... Nd7, since the knight is nearly always moved to e5 on the next move. There is an independent idea behind Nd7, which is keeping the knight on d7 and deciding where to move it next, but I think we can just go for the attack as we would in the main line. So let's consider 8... Nd7, 9. 0-0-0 - Ne5. 

This would be the line for real men or the Rooster-variation. At this point men will need to be men, because literature is letting us down somewhat . Sakaev is dealing here with white's replies 10. Kb1 and 10. h4 while Roman advices us to go 10. Be2 but he mentions that 10. Kb1 is hot at the time of writing (2010). That's exactly what Houdini wants us to play though! the idea is that Nxf3 and gxf3 gives white an open file for attack, but black players should not do you a favour like that... White's second idea is to play Nd4 so that all pawns are mobile for an attack on the black king. Simple ideas that are great for lazy club players! Below I will show you two games by a world champion that knows how to get the maximum out of this lazy opening... The first is a blindfold game against one of the main defenders of the Petroff defense...

... I can recommend you to have a look at the analysis that is provided in "Illustrative game 5" of chess opening for white explained. It is a bit cheap for me to repeat a grandmaster's analysis, so I'll just note that this is a nice example of the opposite coloured bishop advantage when conducting a middlegame attack.

The second game perfectly shows what can go wrong for black if he is not aware of white's attacking potential...

All in all not bad for such an easy to learn opening. Most likely we will not be able to copy the games of super GM's but at least we can play our games with a good idea in mind!

All this stuff must have been rather boring, but I am sure one person benefits from all this... me! It feels good to write down my analysis in the hope I will remember this stuff for a while .

Now let's hope that no-one will play this opening against me... after all, I was hoping to learn the Ruy Lopez!