Mr. Till, I have a funny story for you.  I really liked this opening for black
so I talked my group into playing it in Vote Chess.  We win over 80% of our
games, but we used this and got crushed in under 25.  I still think it is a
great idea and you are one of the better chess teachers, we just made a couple early blunders and didn't really know what we were doing.  The moral of the story, don't get too excited about  a new opening until you grasp it a little better.  I will have to show you the game sometime for laughs.

          Because of Bobby Fischer we tend to forget Spassky is one of the greatest
chess geniuses of all-time.  I hear he and his sister could play serious checkers as well.  It's like all those players that had to face Jack Nicklaus in his prime, they were overshadowed.

Here is the game A. Kuznetsov-B. Spassky 1960 that I referenced in a previous note, just for enjoyment.

Mr. Till,

Great points, the main one being that black simply doesn't have to take the knight after the white knight takes the e pawn.  I guess my head is still in Italian games, vienna games etc.  where the d4 (or d5 if black) punch is usually a key idea for either side.  'Trap' was certainly the wrong word.  The games felt like there was a good struggle for initiative occurring, and black was equalizing after white's c3.  This spanish stuff scares me. 

Thanks for taking the time spassky. Such an activity is a great learning opportunity imo.

Hoping for more in the future!

Hello and thanks for the games and comments. I am wondering, in each of these games, white responds with 4. c3 which for me seems a bit slow. After instead  4. 0-0 would black just play normal sound moves? I guess 4...f5 is too early.

Best Regards

Beroz

well,as gimly beat me here,instead of c3 by white nxp setting up d4,but black would be better off wuth queen move and then he would have to recoup his pawn........have not looked much into it but i am sure someone will.

I actually think gimly's line would be quite effective here since it simplifies the game quite quickly and inversely takes Black out of any book preparation as well. Although it is fairly modest with fairly equal play for both sides, it would be a solid opportunity to try and keep the game straightforward.

To gimly:

It can't really be called a "trap" since White doesn't win anything in any variation.  It's more of a trade than a trap.  If there are any traps there, they are for Black.  For example, Black can play (instead of 4...Nxe5) 4...Bxf2+ 5. Kxf2 Nxe5 and he has gotten his pawn back and made the White king move.  Or he can play 4...Qg5, hitting the knight and the pawn on g2. Or how about 4...Nd4 5. Bc4 Qg5 6. Nxf7 Qxg2 7. Rf1 Qxe4+ 8. Be2 Nf3 mate?

Mr. Till (or anyone for that matter)

I have little experience with the ruy but i do have a question.  I'm wondering if this could be a trap for Black?  Maybe i haven't seen far enough into the line.  Also, if this was already asked, i apologize.  Bad Gimly.

Thank you all for your contributions to this experiment! It went much better than I thought it would. I wasn't sure people would take the time to play through all of the games, think about what they saw, and try to extract some common ideas from them. But you did and you did it very well.

Well here are my three main ideas that I promised to post at some point.

1) The main idea (at least for me) is that this line takes White out of the familiar, comfortable, trot out the first 15-20 book moves before starting to think, Ruy Lopez. All of that Bb5-a4-b3-c2 and Nbd2-f1-g3 stuff is out the window here.

When he plays the Ruy Lopez, Black can reply with a plethora of setups (the Marshall Gambit, the Steinitz, the Steintz Deferred, the Berlin, the Open, the Archangel, the Breyer, the Smyslov, etc.) and White has to know what to do against each one. The saving grace is that the first 10-15 moves of each of those is nearly the same! Except for a few like this one, the Classical Defence (sometimes called the Cordel Defence). It is similar to the Schliemann Defence, where Black plays 3...f5 even sooner, which is more risky, due to Black having one less piece developed. But the idea is that White cannot have studied this line more than I have, since I get to play this every time, whereas he has to be ready for all of those other lines. At best, he is recalling what he read in a book 3 years ago, or a game he played 5 years ago. I, on the other hand, am fondly recalling the dozens of successful games I have played with this line and wondering only into which trap White will fall. We always have to remember that some lines are deemed "unsound" by grandmasters who play other grandmasters. To quote Bernard Cafferty in his book "Spassky's 100 Best Games" (of which I have a copy signed by Spassky himself!), after Spassky played ...Bc5 against the Ruy Lopez, "Alekhine too in his day was not averse to trying this move which gets good results in practice despite the frowns of the theoreticians." At the end of the game he describes it as "A typical quick Spassky win on the Black side of the Lopez", and compares it to another game (A. Kuznetsov-B. Spassky 1960), which ends after 23 moves with the comment "A hand to hand fight reminiscent of the 19th century encounters. Just look at White's inactive [queenside] rook and knight in the final position!" Compare this to the last game in this article, J. Simon-B. Till.

2) Black gets quicker and better development than White in the 4. c3 line. This can often lead to attacking chances for Black.

In each of the seven games given here, from the starting position, click on the >> button three times (each click of the >> button advances the position 5 moves, so 3 clicks will put each game at move 15). Compare the development of Black to that of White. In each position, Black's development is only a move or two (usually the queen bishop and rook) from completion, whereas White's is lagging (especially the 3 queenside pieces) or misplaced (Queen in the wrong place, pieces too far from the king). This happens over and over, even against good players.

3) White often has problems with weak white squares, especially if he trades his white-squared bishop (Bxc6).

If White does not castle early, d3 and e2 are prone to exploitation by Black's queen and bishop. When he does castle kingside, the f3 square can come under fire by a pawn on e4, a rook on f8, as well as the queen and bishop. The h3 square (and possibly a pawn on h3) can be targeted by Black's queen bishop, even as it sits on it's original square!

I think that you all, put together, have pinpointed these ideas, and with no help from me! An excellent tool for applying the method used in this article to any opening is the Game Explorer feature of chess.com (you need to be at one of the 3 upgrade levels to use this (well worth the money)). For example, the Game Explorer database has 3256 games that start with the position after 4.c3, and 225 games with 4...f5. That's a lot of games for a relatively obscure variation! The ECO code is C64. Imagine if you clicked through even a fraction of those games. You could not help but become proficient at this opening! It's the same way babies learn to talk. They just hear words and language every day and somehow figure out how to talk. You can do the same thing with chess. Just click through games with the same opening over and over, and you won't even need notes to figure out what's going on, what's important, what doesn't work, etc. Things will become almost automatic, like driving a car. Remember when you first learned? Just making the car go straight without hitting other cars was a big deal. Now you can drive from work to home, thinking about a dozen other things the whole time, and be surprised when you "suddenly" arrive in front of your house! It comes from doing it over and over, not from reading a book on "The Theory of Driving a Car". The same thing happens when you click through hundreds of similar games. It just soaks into to your brain automatically. It's how Paul Morphy learned to play chess by watching his father play other people. He just figured it out. You can do it too!

It's main idea is to open the f-file for play as well as aggressively place the bishop, however, an anamaly in this line is how black tends to end up down on the material count, yet he is no worse because of his active piece play. An ideal plan for white would be to exchange off pieces FAST to squelch black's play.

To Everyone:

First, thank you all for reading this article, playing through the games, and commenting on them.  I think the experiment in Learning By induction (teaching yourself by playing over lots of similar games) is going really well, don't you?  I did not annotate a single move of any of those games and look at all of the insights you have come up with in 24 hours.  Amazing!  Just imagine if you played over 100 games with one opening line, played a few using that line, then played over 100 more!  How could you not become an expert in that line?  Then imagine the feeling you would get when playing a game with someone (especially if they were much higher rated than you are) and HE PLAYED RIGHT INTO THAT LINE!  You would think "I can't believe it! I've got him! He doesn't know that I know EVERYTHING about this line!  He just walked into a buzzsaw!"  Then imagine if you did the same thing with a number of other lines.  Pretty soon, you wouldn't be imitating an expert, you would BE one! 

Keep the comments coming. I'll post my top three ideas soon.

To padman:

Thank you for taking the time to A) view all of the games and B) write such a long and detailed and thoughtful comment!  In the second game, while it's true White could have played 10. Qxe7+ Qxe7 11. Nxe7 Kxe7 and been a pawn ahead, he might still have some problems developing and some positional problems involving the white squares, namely d3, and perhaps more after 12...Rg8 13. g3, since Black has a white-squared bishop and White does not.

Also, the Qh5+ followed by Qe2 idea was tried by Gligoric in the game with Spassky I gave in the comment about 6 comments below yours.  I don't know if that really got him anywhere, but it's better than getting the Queen trapped on a3!

Great overall comment. Thanks!

A common feature of all seven games that is quite instructive is that Black took care of the center first and foremost. He seldom attacked with an unclarified center.

Black is playing a tactically sharp opening that allows white in many cases to launch a promising looking attack against the black king, because black has allowed the queen to deliver check at h5 owing to the f pawns early strike in the centre.

The position if white plays an early Qh5+ is defensible for black and black can develop as white consumes time trying to devour material on the kingside, sometimes winning the rook but allowing black to have a very open game and great counter-attacking potential.

Black capturing early on e4 with a pawn is an integral part of the strategy of dominating the light squares. It clamps down the advance of blacks d pawn which stifles the dark squared black bishop and in many cases if the d file opens up blacks queen can lock down the king and blockade the d pawn with Qd3, as happens in game 2. Black can use his own light squared bishop to assist in the attack against whites king which is often stuck in the centre.

If the white king does manage to castle, black can utilize the open lines on the kingside to attack. In a couple of the games, white spent time trying to exploit blacks seemingly loose play early on and his bishop and queen because sidelined on the queenside while blacks pieces clustered menacingly on the kingside with a healthy pawn chain pointing down towards the white king led by the pawn on e4. Sacrificial ideas involving a bishop taking on h3 and then a knight lodging itself on f3 appeared quite a few times. The e pawn also became passed in several of the games which must always give white some discomfort.

As for the key ideas of the position.

1. For black, it is worth sacrificing material if white consumes time in an ultimately fruitless attack. Positional trumps can provide more than enough compensation, especially otb where white needs to find careful defensive moves while blacks counterattack progresses automatically.

2. White should be very careful about obtaining material at the expense of time. The early advances of blacks kingside pawns create possible weaknesses which might be exploited later on down the track. The situation doesn't need to be exploited right away. For example in the first game, after 8. Qh5+ g6, instead of all the complexity after Nxg6 and then trying to weather the storm, white could perhaps move the queen back to e2 on move 9, castle and then set about targeting blacks weaknesses over the long-run.

3. White shouldn't be so greedy, and if possible, should surrender some material if it shuts down or blunts blacks counterattack. For example, the underdog playing with the white pieces in game 2 had the opportunity to trade down at move 10 and play Qxe7. This would have crystallized a situation where white is a pawn up and black has pawn weaknesses in the form of doubled c pawns and the isolated overextended pawn on e4. Black has a lead in development and attacking potential but white is solid and definitely has an edge. Another idea that came up a couple of times seemed to be white throwing the c pawn forward 2 squares where it could be captured but at least allow white to play the move Nc3 which provides some protection to the vulnerable e2 square. Yes, it gives up a pawn but at least white survives the onslaught. After grabbing an early material lead white had to be prepared to make some material concessions of his own to consolidate against blacks looming invasion.

          Thank you Spassky.  I won my junior high title and then quit chess for 30 years until this year, and my game is awful (especially blitz, which I never played before).
           Once in awhile I notice a good point or two.  Do I win a new car? (chess humor).

i am a little bit sleepy now i will come back tommorow

To: zankfrappa:

Very good!  I may steal your comment as my final comment (especially #1)!