Sunday, October 28, 2007

Opening Preparation


White to play


I've been doing a bit of opening preparation of late - and in one line I managed to reach the position above. It's pretty wild and, I have to confess, totally beyond my understanding so I thought I'd throw it out to the blog readership.

How would you assess this position? How is play likely to proceed?


Those of you unwilling to work as my unpaid openings researchers may want to try answering these questions instead...

(a) what's the opening?
(b) how many moves are we from the start position?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some Winawer sideline? Or maybe a Tromp. Looks fine for black.

Richard

Jonathan B said...

Interesting effort ... although I note an element of bet hedging :-)

I'll post a follow up to give the answers shortly.

I'm still interested to hear what people think of this position though.

ejh said...

I'm fairly sure it's a French, but that may be because I know you play it.

It does indeed look fine for Black. My initial reaction was to prefer White but I think Black may have the safer king, the better queen and the faster development.