Lessons From Munich: First Things First

MY round-one game in the Munich 60+ seniors featured a fashionable line in the Caro-Kann.

It starts 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ exf6.

This position occurs 17,028 times in ChessBase's 2025 Mega database

There was a time when Black's fifth move was regarded as a positional mistake, eg Iakov Neishtadt in Catastrophe In The Opening claimed that ...exf6 led to a "clear advantage" for White.

If all the pieces (except the kings, naturally) were removed from the board, the argument went, Black would have a lost pawn-ending.

A desperate position for Black?

As a matter of fact, it is not clear the ending is lost - Stockfish17 reckons it is, but Dragon1 gives White only a slight edge.

Nevertheless, if such a position, or something like it, were to arise on the board, Black realistically could hope for no more than a draw, while White would have serious winning chances.

However, this did not stop Savielly Tartakower, after whom the variation was named, using it to good effect, including once persuading José Capablanca to adopt it in a consultation game.

Viktor Korchnoi surprised Anatoly Karpov with it in their 1978 world championship match, drawing the game, and used the variation a few more times, which is why it is sometimes named after him.

What Tartakower, Korchnoi and others realised is that it is not particularly easy for White to reach an ending, because first White has to negotiate a tricky middlegame.

Black usually castles kingside early, leaving White with the choice of following suit or castling long.

If White does go for opposite-side castling, Black's four kingside pawns provide more protection for the black king than the white king gets from three pawns queenside pawns on the second rank.

If, however, White goes short, Black can advance the f and/or h pawn to assist in an attack on White's king, while still having three pawns, or at worst two, protecting the black king.

It is hard to say exactly when 5...exf6 started becoming popular again, but in the last five years in Mega25 the move has scored 51%.

Over the same period, the alternative recapture, 5...gxf6, which used to be praised in opening books as the more dynamic choice, scored 46%.

LESSON: just as with the Exchange Variation of the Spanish, so with the Tartakower Variation of the Caro-Kann, it is a mistake for White to regard the game as half-won out of the opening - indeed, in both variations, the middlegame, if not better for Black, is probably easier for Black to play.