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The English Opening Part 2 by GM Arun and GM Magesh

The English Opening Part 2 by GM Arun and GM Magesh

thamizhan
| 12 | Opening Theory

We will continue our discussion of the English opening this week. We had left off last week with a beautiful game from Anatoly Karpov in the World Championship match (Game 2) against Gary Kasparov in the year 1987. So today we will begin with the come back from Kasparov after just two games in Game number 4 in the same match.

 





 

We were looking around for more model games for the English opening from the World Champions and other Super Grand Masters, and then it suddenly occurred to us that we have a strong model player for this opening amongst us. GM Arun has been using the English opening extensively in his 13 year chess career to the top. He has played several quality games in this opening and I have been lucky enough to witness some of them live. Hence today we decided to show a couple of Arun's games as our model games.

The first game is against a young International Master and a soon to be Grand Master Deep Sengupta.

 


 

 

 

 

A very simple yet very instructive game that was. The next game again is a good example for positional struggle. It is nice to see how white keeps stopping black from creating counter chances and slowly emerges on top with his ideas. This is very typical of Arun's chess playing style, to prevent all counter attack measures and slowly crush the opponent! Now let us look at his game against Grand Master Neelotpal Das.

 

 

 

 



 To finish off the proceedings in the English opening, we have decided to give our readers a small opening tree. This is essentially an expansion of the different possibilities that we had discussed last week. Here we want our readers to have an idea of all the different continuations arising after 1.c4. Therefore by studying the following game, you should be able to know the main branches of the English opening. It may not give you in-depth sub variations, but should give you a broader picture of the lines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hope that our readers have enjoyed our comments and views on the English opening, Next week we will be looking into the Queen's Indian Defense. With several improvements being thrown around this opening in recent years, we believe it would be a good addition to one's opening repertoire.

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