Nova Daily - 9 May 2026: Down to Earth

Hi!

Breaking news: Bulgarian Candidate Master Volen Dyulgerov has gone up in my estimation. For the longest of time, he aborted every game that he played against me, but he has now proceeded to continue the game past 1.c4.

It happens more often that people abort their games against me upon seeing 1.c4. For some time I was even rewarded with free rating points upon aborting, which is a time I long back for. Would teach those bloody cowards a lesson that they so desperately deserve. I mean, come on! You can't arrive at your OTB game with black, facing me, and never having practiced 1.c4, can you? One day I would like to obtain a respectable FIDE title, and I want to earn it by working hard for it. I don't want it by winning free points. And you don't want to collapse like this:

So, good on you, Witty! Keep it up! And let's forget that earlier this day you actively aborted a game against me after 1.c4. That never happened, didn't it?

Down to Earth

As many of you are no doubt aware, I'm a great fan of the Alien Gambit. It's been a very reliable opening system to score points with. Occasionally I mess up royally, but usually I take home the game. I'm very happy with Volen Dyulgerov's system and related Chessable course, but at times I need to work harder on it.

It's time for me to get my opening system against this El Dorado system back in order, because I lost my three most recent games against this system.

The line I typically play starts this way:

After these moves, black is up in material, but white's claim to "fame" is the attacks that it's supposed to generate against black's king. Given the fact that I've lost 11 games against this system, two of which against Dyulgerov himself, it's worth knowing what types of tricks can happen in this line, and how to rip them to shreds.

Against the opening line with 5...c5 (sometimes reached by transposition through 5...h6 6.Nxf7 Kxf7 7.Nf3 c5), white has two weapons of choice: the Bc4+ line and the d5 line. I lost against Dyulgerov once in both lines.

The Bc4+ line

This is the line that most of the mad house play. It's a combination of two checks on the next two moves, aiming to disrupt black's coordination while attacking black's king on the vulnerable light squares. It shouldn't work, but it sometimes does.

Here's how to deal with it:

The d4-d5 line

Presented as the course's main line, I have faced it a few times and always seem to have a hard time against it. And that's because I don't remember my homework at times. In five games I've never managed to play the right move: 8...Qd6.

Earlier on, I wrote something about this line. To reiterate this analysis:

I needed to dig this up, and I'm glad that I did. It's been too long since I previously looked at this.