What I Learned Playing Like Artemiev Part 3 : Reti Lines

Hey guys, it's been a few days since my last articles, Part 1 and Part 2 of this series based on my games played with Vladislav Artemiev's Repertoire. Today I'll show you a little of my trials and tribulations as White when playing the Reti with e3.

Before we talk about that, though, I think you should have a look at a couple of games by another Russian GM, Dmitry Gordievsky, who often plays a peculiar structure that few people know and fewer learned how to fight against.

This comes about after a trade by Bg4xNf3 and exf3 is our answer as White. Perplexed ? Please bear with me and have a looksy.

I showed you those lines in order to understand what Slav players can face if they want to go for those d5 and Bg4 lines. This is but one of many pitfalls and I evermore shiver from traveling these dark roads when I had to play the Slav (horribly) as part of this week's games. 

Now to the meat of the article. My two main lessons are connected to playing against Slav-like systems (again !) and King's Indian lookalikes.

Basically my approach was to go b3 as early as possible, but I learned it may only be beneficial as soon as Black has played d5, since the b3 systems are rather toothless against the KID or Grunfeld, which lead me to play with an early b4 instead as soon as Black went g6.

A few games now to express my point further. Some losses were rather unpleasant but it is for the greater good, as zelots often say.