The Four Knights, 4.g3!?

From now on, I will be posting a blog roughly every week, examining some opening. I will first look at the basic book lines, and then some examples.

This week's article is about 4. g3 in the four knights. It is a simple, fun to play opening that doesn't require memorizing variations, but rather knowledge of some basic concepts. This is perfect for those that don't have a lot of time to study openings, or (like me) people who play other openings that require a lot of memorizing (In my case the Dragon).

So here is the basic theory:

Now for some examples (Since I play this, I'll use my own games):

Forgive me for reusing past material, but since I already annotated this game in the thread 4. g3!?, I didn't want to again.

Note how when I carried out the thematic f4 break, my attack came through.

The previous example was recent, this next game came from a while ago. I managed to get a knight on f5, (which is often a great square for the knight, because the knight usually comes to h4 to make way for f4, so it might as well continue to f5) so the knight was perfectly placed for a d4 break.

So, despite all the mistakes in that game, it shows a typical white build up on the kingside.