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Caro Kann - Two Knights Attack

Caro Kann - Two Knights Attack

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yarrichar
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The Two Knights Attack is the weakest bit of my Caro Kann. I've only scored 25% from it. In other variations I score much better:

The Two Knights Attack arises from this position:

I always play dxe4 here, and follow it up with Nf6, which looks like it's one of the top book moves.

Eric Rosen discusses this position in his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdx-2XmM12w&t=677s

As he puts it the idea of Nf6 is to recapture with exf6 with easy development and a solid pawn structure in front of our king once we're castled.

I've always recaptured the other way though with gxf6 (going for something like the Bronstein-Larsen variation), which looks like it's a lot less popular. As Eric Rosen says, the idea behind Qe2 (the main white alternative to capturing on f6) is to force black to play gxf6 since the e pawn is now pinned. 

The Youtuber Hanging Pawns discusses an interesting alternative to dxe4, which is to go Nf6 straight away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5OjT1K_s58&t=1125s

These are the lines he gives:

Eric Rosen thinks white shouldn't try and hold onto the d5 pawn at all, and instead meet Qd4/5 with d3. White puts his bishops on d3 and e3, and has a lead in development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdx-2XmM12w&t=1924s

In spite of the title of Eric Rosen's video covering this move being "How to CRUSH the Caro-Kann!" I think we'll give it a go:

  1. I need to try something a bit different in the Two knights attack
  2. I get a lot of dry positions out of the Caro and this looks like it'll be a bit more fun

My repertoire vs the Two knights attack now looks like:

This is a screenshot from https://chesslens.app/ which is also where I found the Youtube videos mentioned above.

Thanks for reading!