Nova Daily - 17 April 2026: The Keres English—Part III

Hi!

After a brief German intermezzo, let's get back on track with the study of the Keres variation.

The Keres English—Part III

In the previous installment, I've looked at the lines in which black decided to defend the e5-pawn with d7-d6. While it's perhaps a solid line, white has the possibility to steer the game into favourable territory. There are two other possibilities to deal with the d2-d4 challenge. One is to push the pawn to e4, the other is to capture on d4 and hope to be able to exploit the position of the queen on d4. Both are very interesting lines, and there is an interesting thing going on here when we compare these lines to the analogous variations from the Sicilian Alapin.

A statistical anomaly

When entering the moves 1.c4 e5 2.g3 c6 3.d4 into the Chess.com Master Games database, it shows about 1000 games with 3.d4. In contrast, 2...d5 in the Sicilian Alapin has been played over 21 000 times. This difference is explained easily by the fact that 1.e4 is white's most popular opening move (2M games), and that 1...c5 is black's most popular response (almost 900k games). In contrast, 1.c4 occurs a few thousand times short of 300k, and 1...e5 is only the second most popular answer with 64k games.

An anomaly occurs after the push of the d-pawn. In the Keres English, the push 3...e4 happens twice as often as the capture 3...exd4. Interestingly, this is different in the analogous variation of the Alapin Sicilian, in which the capture on d5 is practically a no-brainer for white (20.9K games vs 135).

To understand why this is, it's useful to compare the situations.

The importance of the extra tempo

Comparing the English with the Sicilian is something that happens a lot, and for various reasons. One of them is philosophical: white has the privilege of the first move. That's a power that comes with the theoretical responsibility that in a higher sense, white should be looking to turn this extra amount of time into an advantage of sorts. Philosophically, black doesn't have that burden of proof (although technically, black's task is the same as white's).

The difference between the Alapin Sicilian and the Keres English is the fact that in the latter the g-pawn has moved up one square. While it has the common positive aspect that the extra tempo helps with white's development, there is a principled drawback to this move: white has committed the development of the king's bishop. Black has no incentive to do so in the Alapin Sicilian.

In the Alapin Sicilian, pushing the pawn to e5 leaves the pawn in no-man's land. The best way to justify the pawn thrust is by defending the pawn with 4.d4, which creates a pawn chain scenario:

Such pawn chains are common in the French and the Caro-Kann. However, in both those cases, black has made a concession of sorts. The French sees black's e-pawn moved to e6, which limits the development of the queen's bishop. In the Caro-Kann, black loses a tempo with the c-pawn. In the above diagram, black suffers from neither of these drawbacks and essentially has the best of both worlds. Whether black's position is objectively better is up for debate; practically speaking, however, black is certainly not worse. The statistics are highly in black's favour, and most well-informed white players would opt for more challenging opening lines that promise a better chance for an opening advantage.

And now that we're on the topic of Alapin Sicilians: this is where white's extra move g2-g3 comes into play. The number of lines in the Advance French and Advance Caro-Kann in which black opts for a kingside fianchetto are very slim. There is an Anti-Morra line that you can also employ against the Alapin, but it is regarded with scepticism by c3-expert Evgeny Sveshnikov:

In its analogous variation, then, answering white's d2-d4 with e5-e4 makes more sense. This is confirmed by 3...e4 being the most popular choice in the Masters database. However, it's interesting to observe that with Nf6 and Bg2 inserted, black's top choice has been the capture rather than the push. And there's a good reason for this.

The Bg5 pin

There is a good reason why black doesn't usually fancy pushing the pawn when the knight has been developed. The reason for this is that it gives white the possibility to put pressure against this important defender of the light squares by means of Bg5:

As can be seen in the above diagram, the knight is an important defender of the light central squares. There's a good case for black to take it out with Bg5. I know from my experience with black in the analogous Sicilian variation that being able to pin that knight with the bishop can be considered an achievement (or a gift, whichever terminology you prefer to conduct).

Following Marin:

An interesting game with this variation was played between Michael Adams and S.P. Sethuraman:

Trading the bishops off 

Trading the bishops off first with Bb4+ will remove white's option to pin Nf6. If black then manages to get d7-d5 in as well, black will be in very good shape to keep the central constellation alive. That means that white has to be quick and resolute in thwarting that ambition.

White gets an extra option that's interesting and critical:

Pushing d4-d5 dynamically isolates the pawn on e4, which will help white in rounding it up later on. As an example, here is a game from the Spanish Super-GM Francisco Vallejo Pons:

Summary

When black pushes the e-pawn to e4, the question immediately arises whether such a space-gain is premature or not. If black cannot maintain the pawn on e4, it will amount to a loss of time and a positional concession.

The Bg5 pin is an important theme in these structures, because the bishop would eliminate one of the important defenders of black's centre. Trading dark-square bishops can be considered a gain for black because it prevents the annoying Bg5 pin against the knight. On the other hand, it can be argued that this trade is advantageous to white as well: it's a free tempo for development. Next to this, white has the important and interesting option of pushing d4-d5 to effectively isolate black's e4-pawn. Following Qd4, the e4-pawn will become hard to defend.