Lemming Defense: Declined
Lemming Defense: Declined can still lead you to an extremely solid position. I’ve played The Lemming Defense Declined Variation in unrated games against high rated players, and despite their excellent ability, they had a very difficult time penetrating my defense, and thwarting off my attackers. Multiple times I was in a winning position and up material (against 1700+’s) but got flagged because I was thinking too much about the opening, but the theory proved to be effective, even at the higher level.
One element is it may be better to delay g6 to play d6, e5 to stop white from kicking out your knight after e5
You can see this is one example of how we can get up materially in realistic game play, the Lemming Defense: Declined can quickly transition into something like this for black, where black is up material, controls the tempo, and has great attacking lines.
We can also experiment with the idea delaying theory with c5, to Gambit the pawn - if white takes, then we take back Nxc5 to get our knight back in the center of the board, as as weaken white’s center
If white pushes the pawn d5, this is good for black too, as the e5 push we were worried about becomes weakened, allowing us to play c6, d5 to stop the push and kick the bishop out (if it’s on f4, if not, it still stops the push) and allows us to develop the Lemming Defense normally from there, Nf6 then castle for an incredibly strong position
While much more is still to be learned about the Lemming Defense, we can see even in the declined Variation we get the main goals of the Lemming accomplished:
•Attack lines on short castle and a1 rook
•Very tough, solid defensive layout, difficult for white to penetrate
•Black takes the tempo away from white, already getting an advantage
•Our defenders double as aggressive attackers at a moment’s notice
While still in its early stages, the Lemming Defense has proven itself not only to be a versatile opening with serious upsides that other black defenses don’t offer (taking tempo from white, controlling the verticals immediately, hitting short side castle with king attacker, creating a very difficult to penetrate defensive wall) but also to be applicable in actual games, even high rated 1800+ games. Take a look at fellow Lemming Defense student @little_guinea_pig, rated 20002 in rapid and almost 1900 in blitz, playing the Lemming Defense against an 1850, and overwhelmingly defeating him:
The Lemming Defense can lead to positions never seen before on the chess board, making it difficult for your opponent to know what move to play next. While we stick to our main line theory of Defense and attack, our opponent loses the advantage of being white as they struggle to figure out what they should play next.
The game is in black’s hands, now.
