Catalogue
In hardly any other opening does the second player get so many chances for an early initiative as in the Chigorin Defence 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6. Among its practitioners are A.Morozevich and I.Miladinovic, as well as various other strong grandmasters.
Nevertheless, for a long time the Chigorin Defence had a dubious reputation. Only the success of the players just mentioned, combined with the appearance of the first German edition of this book in 2001 gradually changed this. This now thoroughly updated essential work on the Chigorin offers 115 games scrutinised in detail, explains all the strategic principles and therefore creates a solid theoretical basis for the defence.
The Chigorin Defence is especially suited to the aggressive player. The immediate attack on White's centre gives the first player many opportunities to go wrong. The resulting positions are full of strategic imbalances, which helps the student to develop his thinking in dynamic patterns.
The author is a Ukrainian IM who now lives in Stuttgart/Germany. The first German edition of this book founded his reputation as a respected theoretician, a reputation which was increased by his subsequent books on the Colle-Koltanowski System and the Basman-Sale Sicilian 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5.
"The contents are first-class and the author has put a tremendous amount of work into the book. Material is drawn from nearly all possible sources and the author has added an abundance of original analysis, improvements, and suggestions of his own." Five stars.
Introduction
Dear chess friend!
As every chess player, of course you have worried about which kind of openings to apply in order to be as successful as possible. With Black it is particularly difficult to make the right choice - right from the start we are in a situation in which the opponent tries to force his will upon us.
What can we do to get rid of this pressure?
There are different ways of dealing with this problem.
Many players strive for a maybe somewhat passive, but solid position with Black, intending to equalize the chances sooner or later by accurate play and precise defence. And if the opponent overextends his position, in this way they even may achieve a whole point.
This restricted method is, by all means, possible, but there are a lot of drawbacks, e.g.:
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There are relatively few possibilities for the opponent to blunder in the opening or in the early middlegame because when we play like this, he does not have any threats to which he must respond. For him it is (at least in these stages of the game) only a matter of making his initiative tell or not.
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Nor is it recommendable to get into a passive position against a stronger opponent. He will certainly be pleased with this and try to initiate some plan of attack. Because of the different playing strengths, it can often happen that we recognise his ideas too late. And in a passive position a single inaccuracy can cost us the whole point.
For that reasons many players dispense with quiet openings when playing Black, but go to the other extreme - they play risky systems, which are over-active and demand exact play of the opponent from the very beginning, too, but ob jectively speaking they are anti-positiona l and therefore bad. Now and then this can lead to success, but if the opponent prepares for the game or by some chance knows the variation we play, we are virtually lost.
But there is a third approach - to play openings, which are active and positionally sound at the same time. The best examples are the King's Indian or the Sicilian Defence. But here we face the other problem: they are mostly very popular, and we can hardly expect that our opponent doesn't know them.
It would be ideal if our opening were not only active and sound, but also not too popular and therefore not that well- know n to our potential opponents. Then we have muc h more chance s of embarrassing our opponent from the very beginning. Of course in doing so we have to know ourselves the most important vari ations and the typical positions and have to understand the strategic features.
This is then the right time to acquaint ourselves with the Chigorin Defence . It is about the positions, which arise after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6!? and 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nc6!?.
1.d4 d5 2.c4
Let's have a closer look at this position. With his last move White began to take action against Black's centre, specifically against the d5-pawn. The second player has basically three possibilities:
a) Giving up the centre immediately with 2...dxc4 , but therefore, for the moment, getting an extra pawn - the Queen's Gambit Accepted . This opening is considered as relatively safe, but somewhat passive. As a rule, White soon regains the pawn, gets a space advantage and has several possibilities to fight for the initiative. There are also many variations in which he can avoid virtually any risks and yet have a slightly more active position.
b) Strengthening the d5-pawn, e.g.:
b1) 2...e6 - Queen's Gambit Declined
Black doesn't give up the centre, but protects his central pawn. This classical treatment of the Queen's Gambit is also safe, but passive. The drawback of ...e7-e6, however, is obvious - the c8- bishop is locked up. Normally a positiona l game with a slight advantage for White lies ahead, whereas for a long time Black can only fight for equality .
b2) 2...c6 - Slav Defence
The c8-bishop stays free, but now the c6-square is denied to the knight. Positionally speaking, the Slav Defence is very healthy, and many top players prefer it. But White has a very wide range of both quiet and sharp variations, and, as a rule, he dictates the play.
c) Instead of giving up the centre or passively strengthening it, Black launches a counter attack against White's central pawns.
c1) 2...e5?! - Albin's Counter-Gambit
He sacrifices a pawn, hoping to get a space advantage in the centre after 3.dxe5 d4. According to theory, this is considered to be not quite correct, al though White needs good opening knowledge.
c2) 2 ... Nc6!?
Black develops his knight and attacks the d4-pawn at the same time. Moreover, the c6-knight supports the action in the centre with ...e7-e5. The queen's bishop stays free, and in the case of Ng1-f3, it is ready to go to g4 in order to increase the pressure on d4. And now , after only two opening moves, Black has an advantage in development!
In terms of the second possibility 1.d4 d 5 2.Nf3 Nc6!? Black can begin an active fight for the centre with 3...Bg4 at the next move.
The black system is so aggressive that, to tell the truth, I don't understand why this opening is called 'Defence', and therefore I would suggest it be regarded as a counter attack .
The Russian chess player Mihail Chigorin who was a world-class player in the Steinitz era and discovered 2... Nc6!?, was considered as a particularly dangerous opponent because of his agg ressive style and his original ideas. Let me now take the liberty of demonstrating one of his games, which I like best:
1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.cxd5 Bxf3 5.dxc6 Bxc6 6.Nc3 e6 7.e4 Bb4 8.f3 f5 9.e5 Ne7 10.a3 Ba5 11.Bc4 Bd5 12.Qa4+ c6 13.Bd3 Qb6 14.Bc2 Qa6 15.Bd1 Bc4 16.f4 0-0-0 17.Be3 Nd5
Harry Nelson Pillsbury - one of the strongest players of his time - is totally outplayed after 17 moves. And this happened without tactical tricks, purely positionally! There followed 18.Bd2 Nb6 19. Qc2 Rxd4 20.Rc1 Bd3 21. Qb3 Nc4, and he could already have resigned with a clear conscience.
Nowadays the opening has a curious and hardly comprehensible status. On the one hand it still occurs relatively seldom, on the other hand it is frequently employed by some strong players, and that with good results.
Alexander Morozevich, for a couple of years one of the world's top players, employs the Chigorin Defence even against players like Kramnik, Anand or Ivanchuk. The strong grandmaster Igor Miladinovic is an absolute Chigorin fan and confirms with his numerous wins the high quality of the great Russian player's discovery.
GM Robert Rabiega, who convincingly won the strong German championship in 2000, certainly appreciates M.Chigorin - he twice played against the Queen's Gambit in this tournament, and he twice score d th e ful l point wit h 2...Nc6. C hristop h Wisnewski, the tournament's surprise who started with the worst Elo rating of all the participants, scored 2½ out of 3 with our silver bullet - that mean s 4½ out of 5 for the Chigorin Defence at the mos t important national event of the year.
Especially remarkable was Rabiega's fight against super grandmaster Alexander Nenashev (now he's called Graf) who had 150 Elo points more than he did . This encounter, in which the favourite gets into a horrible position already after 14 moves, you can find as Game 109 in our book.
As a rule, the positions arising from the Chigorin Defence are rich in ideas, whether the play is quiet or sharp. Regularly there crop up positional problems such as doubled pawns, development advantage, knight (pair) against bishop (pair), material sacrifices for the initiative etc.
Therefore I hope that this book will not only assist you with this specific opening, but also that it will be useful for your general understanding of the game .
The author wishes you much success!
Valery Bronznik
Stuttgart, August 2001
Acknowledgements
Sincerely I would like to thank especially IM John Watson, CC-IM Jonathan Tait and CC-IM Bernd Rädeker who unselfishly made available to me their private game and analysis material.
However, most of all I would like to thank IM and CC-GM Dieter Mohrlok who invested an incredible amount of time in looking through and correcting the whole manuscript. Without him this book - my first one - would probably never have appeared.
About this revised English language edition
In the beginning of 2002 this book was released only in German, nevertheless it soon became internationally acclaimed.
Shortly after the idea for an English language version developed, but before that the contents of the book had to be updated first.
This revision has been done for the current edition and in the process of examining the new games, I was pleased to see that many of my analyses and suggestions from the original edition have been tested successfully in many amateur and master games. A further contribution to the discussion was brought by the independently released CD by the aforementioned C . Wisnewski, who constantly puts the Chigorin Defence to the test on the Internet, as well as in his tournament games, against many well-prepared opponents.
The additional 24 pages by no means reflect the amount of work that was put into this edition - many variations and analyses were revised, corrected or made more precise; some of them were entirely rewritten. Six new main games were added, one game from the first edition was omitted.
I would like to express my gratitude for the many enthusiastic reactions to the first edition, and at the same time hope that the ideas from the current edition will be likewise appreciated and tested in tournament games.
Valery Bronznik
Stuttgart, May 2005
List of Content
Contents 3
Symbols 4
Introduction 5
Acknowledgements 8
Chapter 1 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 dxc4 4.e3 9
Chapter 2 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 dxc4 4.d5 20
Chapter 3 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 dxc4 4.Nf3 50
Chapter 4 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 104
Chapter 5 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.cxd5 Bxf3 5.gxf3 119
Chapter 6 1 .d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.cxd5 Bxf3 5.dxc6 Bxc6 6.Nc 3 142
Chapter 7 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.Nc3 157
Chapter 8 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.e3 169
Chapter 9 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.Qa4 174
Chapter 10 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 e5 181
Chapter 11 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.cxd5 Qxd5 4.Nf3 e5 195
Chapter 12 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.cxd5 Qxd5 4.e3 e5 5.Nc3 Bb4
6.Bd2 Bxc3 7.bxc3 206
Chapter 13 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.cxd5 Qxd5 4.e3 e5 5.Nc3 Bb4
6.Bd2 Bxc3 7.Bxc3 260
Chapter 14 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.e3 e5 4.dxe5 297
Chapter 15 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bf4 (3.Bg5, 3.e3) 3...Bg4 303
Chapter 16 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.g3 317
Index of Players 330
Bibliography 332
Index of Variations 333 | 
