Nova Daily - 15 April 2026: The Keres English—Part II

Hi!

After yesterday's draw by Sindarov to secure the first place in the Candidates and become the challenger for Gukesh, the Uzbek youngster took a quick and rather bloodless draw against Wei Yi, with a draw by threefold repetition on move 32 that took less than 10 minutes to appear on the board. Many people predicted this before the start of the round.

What not everyone predicted was what happened in the Women's Candidates. For a very long time it was unclear who would walk away with the victory. Ever since the previous Candidates I've been rooting for Vaishali. While she was the lowest rated player going into the tournament, she was a full point ahead after 11 rounds. However, Zhu Jiner tripped her with the Caro-Kann (which I found a small concellation), drawing level on a +2 score.

Round 13 wasn't short of spectacle. Vaishali escaped with a draw against Tan Zhongyi. And following Zhu Jiner's sudden collapse against Aleksandra Goryachkina and Bibisara Assaubayeva's win over Anna Muzychuk in round 13, Vaishali was joined at the top of the rankings by the star from Kazakhstan going into the final games.

So, all eyes on Vaishali and Assaubayeva this final round. Vaishali, playing white against Kateryna Lagno, had a very promising position from the opening: a Sicilian Dragon in which black sacrificed a pawn for attacking chances. Assaubayeva, playing black against Divya Deshmukh, was trying her luck in a Benoni position. Both highly imbalanced opening systems, which are very good systems to fight for the full point with black. Black tried to push for the win, but had to confine herself with a draw in the end.

Vaishali, on the other hand, maintained her advantage and was able to push for the win. In the following position, she came to the right conclusion, 39 moves late:

And so, I'm happy to be able to congratulate my favourite chess-player, Rameshbabu Vaishali, and wish her the best of luck in her World Championship match against Ju Wenjun!

In conducting this interview, Zachary Saine scored a few points in my books. But that might be a topic for a different discussion.

Back to business.

The Keres English—Part II

In yesterday's blog, I indicated that I'd divide the work for this Keres variation into three parts, based on the choice that black has to make after d2-d4. The tension can be dealt with in three ways: black can take on d4, push to e4, or maintain the tension. In each of these cases, there are two details that may or may not change the nature of the game: whether or not black has played Nf6, and whether or not black has played Bb4(+). I'll address each of these in due course.

In this post I'll be looking at black's option to maintain the tension with d7-d6.

There are several things about 3...d6 that should be highlighted.

The first point of interest is that this move seems quite cautious (and indeed it has been labelled as such in Marin). This cautious nature not only touches on black's deciding not to take any immediate action in the centre, but also has some "collateral damage" in the sense that Bf8 is hemmed in. This is an important point that has great ramifications for the analogous line with black playing 3...Bb4+, on which I will expand later in this blog.

Secondly, 3...d6 appears to be a change of plans for black. Initially, the move 2...c6 signals black's ambitions to expand in the centre with d7-d5, and putting the pawn on d6 foregoes this ambition for a more compact but also more restrained version. Coupled with the reduced productivity of Bf8, white has every reason to see d7-d6 as a concession of sorts. White can obtain a space advantage with 4.Nc3 followed by e2-e4 and play a Catalan game against either the King's Indian or the Old Indian, depending on where black chooses to stall the king's bishop.

There's also something more immediately striking about black's last move, and probably this is what many players saw at once: white can trade on e5 and then chop off the queens, thereby depriving black of the right to castle. This is a viable alternative to the Indian transposition as mentioned above.

Literature

Marin mentions that he considers the transposition to 1.d4 territory to be white's best try and refers to Boris Avrukh's 1.d4 repertoire books to study this variation. He then proceeds to analyse the alternative, which gives the game an independent English nature.  On the other hand, Dvirnyy curiously only covers ...d6 variations with Bb4 included.

This means that I have to do my own work here. So, let's get going.

Chop, chop, and then what?

The critical English attempt runs thus:

I'd expect most beginners to stop their opening work here, thinking "I've ruined black's right to castle, I'm winning." It's very similar to that variation in the Philidor in which white trades twice, even castles queenside while giving check, and then finds that it's not as easy to make progress as they had imagined at first:

Allowing the trade on d8 clearly isn't the end of the world for black. How, then, should white continue?

Against 6.Nf3, black can play 6...f6. That would make Ben Finegold furious (which is an extra win), and it makes sense to fortify the central setup with this move. This variation would be very different if the moves Nf6 and Bg2 had been included, because that f7-f6 thrust is no longer available:

In terms of strategy, the most important positional aspect of the position is that black's e-pawn will remain on e5. That makes black's dark-square bishop a "bad bishop" and white's DSB a "good bishop". White's plan should involve the following elements:

• Don't trade dark-square bishops! White's dark-square bishop is going to be the MVP of white's strategy. If the trades on e5 and d8 have already taken place, white should answer any Bb4+ with Nc3 (or maybe Nbd2), but not with Bd2.
• Keep the e4-square vacant! With the pawn not going anywhere, there is no need to "fix" the pawn on e5 by clogging the e4-square with a pawn. Having the e4-square available for the knights can be a great help for white's knights.
• The trade of light-square bishops is favourable to white.

The following game shows these points in action very well:

Following the above discussion, the combination of keeping the bishop inside and playing Nf6 isn't favourable to black. So what does the line look like without the insertion of Nf6 and Bg2?

In this position, developing 6.Nf3 doesn't make black's life hard because of the consolidating 6...f6. So white has to resort to something different. On the plus side, white hasn't played the bishop yet, and with the knight still sitting on g1, the possibility of trading light-square bishops is readily available. A good plan for white is to trade the light-square bishops and then place the pawns on light squares while fighting for control over the e4-square. Again, not place a pawn there, but make sure that the knights can chill there.

The following position is the end of the line as proposed by Marin. It shows how white will want to have their pieces:

Note that black did end up playing Nf6 here, which was important in the battle for control over the e4-square. White has subsequently prepared to dislodge that knight from the f6-square with the kingside expansion. White intends to push g4-g5 next and thereby gaining access to e4.

Conclusion:

In lines with ...d6 without the preliminary Bb4(+), black's e-pawn will typically sit on e5 for a very long time. Bearing this in mind, white can effectively manufacture a battle of good bishop vs bad bishop by keeping the dark-square bishops alive and trading the light-square bishops off. While black may be able to survive with absolute best play, white's moves come naturally. Much of the battle will revolve around white conquering the e4-square for the knights.

Bb4+

In order not to leave the bishop passive, black typically seeks to trade bishops through a check on b4 before solidifying the e5-pawn with d7-d6. As indicated above, Dvirnyy only considers this flavour of d7-d6 and doesn't bother with the lines in which black keeps the bishop inside.

This modification changes a lot:

In the discussion above, I indicated that white shouldn't allow black to trade off the dark-square bishops. There were a few exceptions in which the trade would be immediately detrimental to black, but in the present line black has traded off the bishops for absolutely free. There is no longer a good bishop vs bad bishop fight going on, which is a favourable alteration for black.

There is even another advantage that black has here as compared to the lines above: in this case the king can move to e7 without obstructing the bishop. That's especially useful in the following line:

With black's king never in danger, black's bishop active and unhindered, and there not being any targets for white to exert pressure against, it's not a farfetched conclusion that black is at the very least completely fine.

That means that unlike in the previous section, here the pair of trades is not a critical test, and as an attempt to obtain an opening advantage it's inadequate. White will therefore need to find a different method to obtain sufficient play. That has to come from maintaining the tension, which translates into a position reminiscent of the Bogo Indian.

Literature

Marin proposes a variation with e2-e3, while Dvirnyy suggests a line with e2-e4. This may be a matter of preference, but I believe that there is merit to Marin's method. A pawn on e4 is unlikely to move, and Bg2 isn't really helped by this. Moreover, one of the issues that Dvirnyy faces in his lines is that black can opt to shove b7-b5 at an opportune moment. That's a direct consequence of having shut the bishop in.

However, these are not the only options. White has another interesting line here that aims to make use of the fact that after 7...0-0, the king is far away from the centre and can't readily assist in the battle for the d6-square:

This line looks quite fun to play for white, because black has some difficulties getting the queenside developed. Here is a high-level model game that followed this variation:

I think that black's collapse in this game is very typical and underlines how difficult it is to handle this line from a human perspective.

Conclusion

While the endgame with the king in the centre is very much okay for black, it is another matter if black castles kingside. In that case, the king will be unable to assist in keeping the queenside together, and like Puranik demonstrated in the above game, white can make real progress on that side of the board. So after the bishop trade, white is best advised to maintain the tension in the centre until black castles kingside, and then to prepare for an expansion on the queenside. Black has to choose between letting Bg2 exert influence on the long diagonal, or pushing e5-e4 and having to babysit that pawn for the rest of the game.

In conjunction with fighting for the initiative on the queenside, the battle for control over the d-file was a key factor in the above game.

In terms of setup, eventually black will want to play Nf6 anyway, and it doesn't matter all that much when it happens.

Summary

The lines in which black opts to maintain the pawn on e5 by defending it with ...d6 are positionally very interesting. Leaving the dark-square bishop at home allows white to trade queens and light-square bishops, thus creating a situation of good bishop vs bad bishop. It's essential that white doesn't occupy the e4-square with a pawn.

Trading dark-square bishops is favourable to black in the above scenario, and so black can opt to trade these before playing d7-d6. Here the trade of queens will certainly favour black, because the king in the centre will be very strong. Therefore, white should wait until the king castles away, and only then proceed to trade the queens off.

Next to these methods to give the position a more independent character with dxe5, white can also go with the Avrukh repertoire and transpose into a regular Bogo-Indian-type setup with a quick Nc3 and e4.