Typical Ideas in the Jobava London (Part 1)
Table of Contents
In recent years, the Jobava London has gained popularity both at the highest level and among club players, thanks to players such as Baadur Jobava, Richard Rapport, Daniel Naroditsky, and Arjun Erigaisi, who have played this opening at the top level of chess. Here is the starting position of the Jobava London:
Developing the knight to c3, blocking the c-pawn, is quite unusual, but there are interesting ideas behind it, as we will see soon. Even if the Jobava London is an aggressive opening that may lead to complicated positions, in this post, I will focus on three typical positional ideas in this opening. I plan to address typical, more aggressive ideas of the Jobava London in a future post.
In the initial position of the Jobava London, white plans to play Nb5 with the primitive threat of playing Nxc7. Despite appearances, the idea behind Nb5 is deeper: to misplace black's knight on a6, where it will have a hard time returning to the game. The following are two model games on this positional idea:
In the mainline, where 3. e6-Nb5-Na6 is played, white should consider taking the a6-knight, if black allows it, with Bxa6!? The idea behind this move is to take control of the central dark squares, notably e5 and c5, with the knights. Here are two games that feature this positional idea:
Finally, I annotated two model games that feature a positional idea typical of the Jobava London, but also of the London system. The idea is to allow Bxf4, doubling our pawns, to gain control of the important e5-square, where white wants to establish a strong knight. Besides, the doubled f-pawn might contribute to the attack by advancing at some point.
