The London system - A misunderstood opening Part 1

Hello everyone, I am Vishnu and today I will be trying to bestow everyone reading this with a basic understanding of the London system and hopefully change people's opinions on the London system being a "boring opening". Let's get started!

The London system is an opening which arises from 1. d4, the Queen's pawn opening. I will be trying to divide the opening into three parts.

Step 1:

 White intends to bring his bishop out to f4, put his pawns on e3 and c3 establishing a solid pawn structure in the center of the board.

Step 2:

We then bring out our kingside knight to f3, controlling the vital e5 square. Notice how the pawn structure is constructed in such a way that the bishop on f4, the central pawns and the knight on f3 control the dark squares. You might be thinking, "well, then who would control the light squares?" The answer is, the light squared bishop which moves to d3 ravaging the b1-h7 diagonal and taking control of the important light squares notably e4. The knight on b1 is the only "passive" piece in this opening. It has lost it's natural go-to square c3 and thus decides to sit on d2 for the time being, overprotecting the e4 square.

Now that you know what the opening is, lets look at why it is misunderstood. The majority of the chess population who know about this opening, think it is quite a solid opening and does not offer any sort of winning chances for white. This is what Wikipedia had to say on the opening :  The line gives White a solid position, and critics of the line refer to it as the "old man’s variation" or the "boring system".

Well, I am here to prove you wrong! Today, we will be looking at one of the most common concepts that occur in the London system, the Greek Gift Sacrifice.

The Greek gift is a reference to the infamous trojan horse. I don't know much about Greek history, but my understanding of the story is that two kingdoms were at war and one of them decided to trick their enemy by offering them a giant wooden horse as a "present" for winning the war. The enemy kingdom accepted the present and were quite proud of their achievement but they did not know that there were soldiers hidden inside the horse and when the sun set, they went on a rampage and decimated the unsuspecting enemies. So, the Greek gift is a bait or a "prize" to the opponent. You can read more about this story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Horse

Anyways, we will be looking at some examples of the Greek Gift sacrifice and also when it does NOT work.

This is an example of a Greek gift possibility in the Owen defense. White plays for this idea from the 6th move by playing e5, kicking the knight out of f6 where it protected the h7 square. Then, black castles right into the attack and white punishes him.

Now, let's see a more advanced example of the Greek Gift. This was actually a game played between GM Gata Kamsky and GM Sam Shankland.

This game did go on after Rd1, but eventually Gata Kamsky (white) won. For a long time, Qe7 by black was thought to be equalizing until Kamsky found this brilliant novelty. Bxd7 after Nxd7 loses. The correct move in that position is the weird Qxd7! white is still slightly better, but the Greek gift leads to a draw due to a very concrete line which I will let you guys figure out. (Bonus points for who comes up with why Bxh7 draws when Qxd7 was played )

Finally, we will look at an instance where the Greek gift backfires. 

As you can see, the knight reroutes itself to f8 where it protects the h7 square and thus prevents checkmate. I should add that white might have compensation for the piece, but the Greek gift idea was an utter fail and now he should try to attack using other ideas like running the h-pawn down the board or a rook lift with Rh3-g3.

That is all for today, thank you for reading this! This is my first blog on chess.com and I would appreciate any sort of feedback in the comments section  Peace out!

P.S do follow me on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/2007vishnu for good luck