Two Tricky Novelties Before Move Ten After 1.g6
Why 1.g6: An Anti-Systems Opening
I find 1.g6 to be quite a smart fighting weapon in today's information age of Chessable, where players of all levels are booked up. There are simply TOO MANY London, Jobava-London, Colle, and Torre players today, thinking they are all that. The worst thing is, these openings do their job very well, sucking the oxygen out of the position against almost any Black response, resulting in a position that is both robust and easy to play for White.
I recently realized that against these souless setups, there are a lot of advantages to 1.g6 and having not committed our knight to f6. There are some interesting ways to derail White's construction. But perhaps my favorite aspect of 1.g6 is that after 1.d4 g6 2.Nc3, we can simply scoff and play Bg7 and d6. That's right, two can play this game of blitzing the first few moves without thinking!
1.g6 Can Be Tricky Even in the Mainlines
The big problem with 1.g6 is of course, playing 1.g6. It isn't exactly known for its soundness. We must be ready if White plays critically and grabs the center. To my shock, there are still a lot of new ideas to discover here for Black, sometimes as early as move four. To my further shock, some of them are actually quite poisonous for White and pose some interesting questions. I wanted to share two of my favorite novelties I found, both before move ten!
Bomb #1
4.Ne2 is a move that tries to maintain control over the position, and I like that 4.e6!N throws a wrench in that immediately. It feels unjust in a way to find a fighting novelty on move four like this in the Modern Defense of all openings, but I'll take it! Now, let's move on to probably the most critical move of all, 4.Nf3.
Bomb #2
8.Bd4!?N has got to be one of the most bizarre novelties I have ever found. Even the engine takes some coaxing before it thinks it's playable. What makes it particularly strange is that it turns such a harmless looking position into one that is actually pretty tricky for White to deal with, especially if they are as disoriented as I was from first seeing it.
Hope you enjoyed the novelties. I do feel like I should end with saying the responsible thing here that 1.g6 should not be your main weapon. I think it's a great tool to have in your back pocket against 1.d4-system players and lower-rated players in order to guarantee a complex fight and perhaps catch them in an early tricky line, but in many lines White is simply slightly better, a few of which we saw above.
I realized I didn't give any examples of why 1.g6 is so great against 1.d4 systems. Here is a quick bonus example of a fresh idea against the Torre/Trompowsky setups by White:
My Anti-Torre:
