A while back I remember you mentioning that in blitz you started playing some of those passive openings with e6/d6/Ne7/Nd7 etc type setups and having surprisingly good results, right? Do you have any advice on how to play against those? In blitz I always try to push too hard to punish the opponent for passive play, but end up overextending, creating weaknesses in my own position, and ultimately losing. Those types of setups are surprisingly difficult to crack.

A pretty tough question to answer!

I suppose speaking in general terms the reason I was doing well is that many games, even against quite strong opponents, would go something like they would insta blitz out the natural e4/d4/maybe c4/Nf3/Nc6/Bc4/dark bishop somewhere and then clearly have no real idea what to do next. A surprisingly large number would then proceed to either just semi-randomly blow up their position or equivalently just start playing completely pointless moves.

The opponents who I fared the worst against were those that refused to ever move without having some sort of plan - even not so great of plans. It's really easy for black to just slowly continue to improve his position since pretty much all of his pieces can be easily improved. So white has to actually do something as if he starts treading water it's likely he'll find himself worse quite quickly! As for the balance between actually doing something and blowing up your own position in the process? That I don't think you can really discuss in generalities!

Perhaps the best way to learn to play against them is to play them yourself and see first hand how your opponents go wrong, or right?

You're right, it's a little bit tough to talk about it just in generalities. Here is a position (not from a specific game, but something I've run into before) that I never know how to approach.



I find this position tough to play from the white side. Developing is easy, but finding a constructive plan is another thing. Black hasn't made any committal central pawn moves, so anytime white pushes either e5 or d5, black can just push past it and lock things up. But if white doesn't make central threats, I don't know what else to do. White's pieces are developed easily, but black has nothing to really attack. Is white's best option to get in d5 and play some sort of a KID structure and play for a b4->c5 break on the queenside?

Curious to hear from anyone else as well who knows how to slay this awful beast

imo simply build your position with an unbreakable center, gain space and strangle your opponent .
with more space and him unable to free himself he should suffocate by lacking piece movement to defend acurately when u switch 2 or 3 times your target of attacks.

White's not nearly done developing there. Just castle and wait to see if he commits to something.

Right, we can do that, but we're still in the same situation. If white castles, black castles, and nothing has really changed. We can play Be3 after that, but at that point are just developing pieces for development's sake.

My question was more what will be our overall plan for the position, assuming black doesn't do anything wild and crazy. To me it looks like a KID type plan of getting some queenside play, but I don't want to push d5 until black has committed to e5 or c5.

just resign on move 2, call the guy a bitch, tell him to learn a real ****ing opening, and move on.

I like GM Vadim Shishkin's approach in this game. He castled queenside and things got pretty tactical. Looks like fun.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1215637

Bg5... Qd2... O-O-O/O-O as appropriate

If he isnt putting any pressure on your centre you dont need to fix the centre yourself.

If he plays c5 type lines then d5 leads to favourable Benoni structures because the positioning of his Knights dont help the standard breaks. If he plays e5 we should keep the tension since closing the position helps him with his f5 break.

I like that advice leofric, I think you're totally right about the c5 type lines. I actually kinda think the same thing about the e5 lines. We get to KID structures where the knight on e7 is misplaced. Doesn't help with the kingside attack like it would from f6. But you're right, I have noticed in a lot of GM games from that position that they often leave the central tension and capture on f5 if black plays it.

Developing pieces for its own sake isn't a bad thing. Against crazy levels of non-commitalness, it's okay to just be content with having a better position.

Look for a guy on ICC named Castlekeeper who plays this style to an annoyingly decent result in slow games. Took me awhile to get the hang of beating him.

Sounds like a plan, I'm going to go find him. Then beat him. Then send him a virus for playing that way.

I think it's a pretty decent way to play. Black is not trying to hide and do nothing, but is just developing his pieces setting up the right pawn break, c5, d5, e5, or f5. From the position in your diagram, Black can go into the Hippopotomaus with a6, b6, h6, Bg7. It's fun to play with Black, but Black can certainly get ripped apart in the middle-game if his timing is even slightly off... but I suppose that is true with any Modern type of setups.

it's been mentioned already but d5 would be a very weak idea, you give up important squares and really do not gain anything.

h2-h4 is always a reasonable move against ...g6. It's especially strong here because Black can't put a piece on g4, so the weakening is less relevant. If I couldn't decide where to put my dark squared bishop, I would play h4.

d4-d5 and Nf3-d4 might be a reasonable plan if Black's bishop was already on b7.

Here I like either h4, or h3 and g4 like in the game tex posted.

black's setup is not supposed to be great if white manages to get in e4, d4 and c4 (usually it is played after white committed to Nc3). As i understand it, the reason is black wants to play a6 and b6 and go b5 after white pushes a5. This is hardly possible with a pawn on c4 and therefore a well-timed a4 is the way to go. If black plays a5 himself, his structure is vulnerable to a b4 or c5 break. Just don't play d4-d5 unless it's absolutely forced or good.

This is nowhere near a winning idea, but a very important plan to look after. Setup like against a classical KID, then play a4-a5 and crush him.

I konw someone who used to play this kind of setup with ...e5 and ...Ne7 with very good results at his level. His opponents invariably ended up closing the position which just gave him a souped up KID.

Of course to irritate him I opened 1. d4 g6; 2. Bg5!

h4 in a heartbeat.

then if black can't find a safe home for his King and he shuffles around too passively, he can quickly find himself in bad shape.

Interesting idea ND. I'll be on the lookout for a timely a4-a5.