The latter may not be much of a surprise as the Petrov seems to me to be one of those defences where Black can be slightly worse for quite a few moves, but in positions very manageable with the help of engines.
Over the board the Petrov was extremely popular at high levels until the rise of the Berlin Wall in the Spanish.
Perhaps one reason for the Petrov's revival is repetition-fatigue settling in with the Berlin.
Another reason may be the discovery that after 3.Nxe5 Black can get away with the 'duffers' move' 3...Nxe4!?
Indeed Stockfish16.1 and Dragon1 reckon ...Nxe4 is only slightly inferior to the mainline ...d6, and the former has the advantage of perhaps causing whites to let their guard down.
Polish Fide master Kamil Plitchta has produced a video for Chessable on this line, which no doubt is helping the revival.
I have also noticed a rise in whites ignoring 3.Nxe5 in favour of 3.d4, after which the most popular continuation is 3...Nxe4
 |
| Position after 3...Nxe4 |
*****
*****
*****
*****
White has three main replies.
Stockfish16.1 and Dragon1 quite like 4.Nxe5, which occurs 723 times in ChessBase's 2024 Mega database, scoring 53%.
Given enough time, the engines come to marginally prefer 4.Bd3, which occurs 8,388 times in Mega24 and scores 61%.
Between these two moves is 4.dxe5, which occurs 1,560 times in Mega24, scoring 57%, and which I have seen a few times recently in club-level chess.
The pawn capture is also increasing in popularity among the elite, the usual continuation being 4.... d5 5.Nbd2.
It is here that Fabiano Caruana introduced the shocking 5...Qd7!? in a win over Nikita Vitiugov at Grenke (Germany) 2018.
 |
| Position after 5...Qd7!? |
*****
*****
*****
*****
I have not been able to find any analysis explaining the idea behind 5...Qd7!?, which scores an impressive 47% in Mega24 and may be an additional factor in the revival of the Petrov.
However, I suspect one major point is that after 5...Qd7!? White is no longer threatening the deeply disrupting 6.Nxe4 dxe4 7.Qxd8+.
Most popular has been 6.Bd3, threatening to win a pawn, but after 6...Nc5 White has generally continued 7.Be2, with a completely equal position, according to Stockfish16.1, although Dragon1 gives White a tiny pull.
CONCLUSION: new ideas are helping to revive the Petrov, and the defence can be expected to increase in frequency at club level over the coming months.
No comments:
Post a Comment