Nova Daily - 25 April 2026: The Keres English—Part V

Hi!

At the start of writing this post, I had hoped that I'd be able to complete my personal series about the Keres English here. However, given how much ground I still have to cover, that's not going to happen. And so I'd have to cut this work up.

There are two important ideas that I still want to look at. One of them is the main line with d7-d5, and the others are the sidelines with Na6. 

The Keres English—Part V

Generally speaking, many opening books start with the main lines and only then deviate by showing alternatives on regressing move-numbers. Others show the sidelines first and then arrive at the main lines later. Both types have advantages and disadvantages. The benefit of showing the main line first is to impress upon the reader what the opening is about, and what the game will most likely look like following correct play from both sides. The main line can then serve as the golden standard against which the sidelines are to be measured.

Showing the sidelines first is a different method. This way, the independent tries are presented first, and you learn along the way why they're sidelines. Through the lens of failing alternatives, you will get to see why the main lines are the main lines. They follow logically. Given that I personally value global understanding more than details, I lean towards this final method. This is why I'll be looking at the Na6 lines first, despite their being more tactical.

Moving the knight to the edge: 5...Na6

Dvirnyy spends very little effort explaining any of the ideas behind this move, but instead dives straight into the moves. Marin spends some time going over it, and I have my own ideas about it as well (though I expect that they coincide with Marin's fairly well).

The knight moves to the edge of the board, hoping to hop into b4 and cause some trouble in white's organisation revolving around the threat of a knight fork on c2. The time that it will take white to deal with this threat can then be put to use for the completion of black's development. One of the points of having the knight on b4 is that in the event of d7-d5 and c4xd5, the b4-knight can recapture and spare black the hassle of justifying an IQP.

On top of this idea, the knight may sometimes team up with the bishop. One key thing is that the garde move Bc5 is on the table, and I've alluded to this idea in my previous post about the Keres. It's something that needs to be addressed properly, and it has been the matter of debate between several authors.

Literature

Marin refers to IM Richard Palliser's chapter on the opening line in Dangerous Weapons: Flank Openings, and so I've taken the liberty to look it up.

First of all, Marin somewhat misquotes Palliser. Rather than saying that it "is an easy equaliser", Palliser is less resolute in his assessment. In the introduction, he reserved judgement by explicitly adding "on the current evidence" and "appears to be" before mentioning the bit about "easy equaliser". In the conclusion to this chapter, however, Palliser draws stronger conclusions, but still presents these in a less forceful way. He also mentions that in the 6...Bc5 line, 7.Qe5+ "has to be tried".

It should be added that in terms of chess-analysis, we're speaking old times here: Dangerous Weapons: Flank Openings was released in 2008, and Grandmaster Repertoire: The English Opening - Volume One in 2009. By today (25 April 2026), the move 7.Qe5+ has shot up as white's most popular choice by a large margin, and it's also the top move of present-day engines.

This means that Palliser and Marin, while somewhat contradictory, were both correct: the evidence at the time led Palliser to conclude that it could be an equaliser, and by pointing at 7.Qe5 he correctly identified the spanner in the works. Marin worked out this line further and proposed an improvement on move 10 over Palliser's line:

If the trading of queens doesn't yield black anything, then black can try without it by playing the bishop back to e7 right away. There's a rationale behind this move as well: black hopes to exploit the queen's position to gain some more time in the near future. Whether this will lead to the desired effect is another matter:

By the looks of it, Bc5 runs into some issues that thwart black's intentions. So if the Bc5 move doesn't do it for black's setup with Na6, then what will?

Combining d7-d5 and Na6-b4

Moving the knight over to a6 had a secondary idea: move the knight to b4. From b4, the knight is threatening something creepy on c2, and simultaneously it's connected to the d5-square. This will allow black to recapture on d5 with the queen's knight.

In principle, this would solve two of black's most nagging problems that come from the c6-complex: the lack of natural development through the c6-square is compensated for, and on top of that, black will not sustain the damage inflicted on the pawn structure by c6xd5.

The question here is whether the details will bear black out.

The answer is a resounding no. Sending the knight into c2 amounts to tactical suicide. In a nutshell, going for quick material gains out of the opening without properly finishing the development and providing for king safety is a bad opening strategy.

I can imagine this working better in the Sicilian, because with one extra tempo, white might be able to play Be2 and be ready to castle away from all the mayhem. In this line, the value of one tempo is the difference between something playable and something utterly lost.

Conclusion

So, while 5...Na6 looks like a good idea that was once valued highly by at least one author that I hold very dear (IM Richard Palliser co-authored the 2.Be2 Sicilian course), I don't think that it really holds that much terror in the end. White should be able to retain more than just a slight pull in the 6...Bc5 variations, and quite a few lines that involve 6...d5 7.cxd5 see the knight loafing around at best. In the only case in which the knight is able to connect with the d5-square, the time-loss it involves will become apparent by white being able to kickstart the Sicilian minority attack while black still has to catch up in development.

All in all, I don't think that the weird-looking 5...Na6 constitutes a real threat to white's opening setup.