There's a difference between playing solidly and playing passively. This so-called "Universal Attack" is nothing more than a rogue attempt to goad Black into over-aggression. Also, I got quite a laugh out of your comment to White's 8th move, the one that says "I'd be happy to go into a Queenless middlegame where White is better becauae of his better minor piece placement and greater controlled space". You call a big pawn and an offsides knight well-placed? What do you call a trapped queen, "slightly misplaced"?
Anew strategy in the Caro-Kann
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Your comment would be appropriate if I were teaching Classical chess theory. This is Universal Theory. First of all the offside Knight comes into play efforlessly to the highly desirable f2 square. The Queen can move. It is not "Boxed In". If you look at the squares the Black minors can occupy, you will readily convince yourself that my minors are better placed. If you doubt this I will post on another site my game where I shut down Fritz 10 in the Closed Sicilian.
You seem to ignore one basic fact. Computers cannot play both Universal Positions and Classical chess at the same time. Either you believe that controlled space is time or you believe that time is defined as how many pieces you have moved from their original squares. I have seen Fritz 10 with Black be dead lost yet claim the evaluation was -1.89!! simply because it is clueless when evaluating Universal positions. Do you really think it is a trivial computing code to get computers to play aggressively and every other Thursday play passively?
For a 1600 player to take Fritz 10 to a materially even (if losing) ending is IMO a truly impressive accomplishment. Bravo. But don't make it into something it's not -- it's not a "new strategy" -- it looks exactly like someone using the most passive setup he can devise to play for a draw with White against the Caro-Kann . It resultes in giving Black a threat-free ride to a winning endgame. As a "new strategy" it fails.
*edit* My god sloughterchess must you be so overweening? You know I believe you actually know a thing or two about playing against computer engines, but then the claims you make and the analysis you provide are so over the top that it's impossible to take you seriously...
"First of all the offside Knight comes into play effortlessly to the highly desirable f2 square." -- so uh in Universal theory getting the N pinned on f2 (effortlessly!) against the King is highly desireable? -- I mean, seriously, click thru the game and you can see that the f2-N is quite possibly the reason the game is lost. It is an absolute waste of a piece. It travels to h3, then immediately to that highly desireable f2, where it spends from move 10 to move 24 pinned to the king while Black works threats against it. When it finally moves, it's to the even more highly desired d1 square where it has no useful moves and is so ineffectively placed that White's ending is lost.
I am impressed that you view my game as passive when played against an opponent rated over 1000 points above me. If objectively equal were the only measure of the soundness of an opening then it would be regarded as "playable" by both sides. To suggest at a practical level that I can hold off my opponent for 40 moves, only to lose a complicated endgame is hardly a refutation of my new opening system; the basic assumption you make is that it is an "easy" game to play leading to a dull game. If you ever saw Kasparov beat Karpov in the Caro-Kann, it is a "dull" game too, but just like so many games played at a high level, all the complications are in the footnotes. That is the case here.
If you think of this game as easy to play, just look at the complications that arise if I had played differently on move 26 when I could have played 26.b4 instead of 26.bxa4. Do you think any Grandmaster would consider it a walk in the park after 26...Nxc3! 27.Qxc3 Qxf2 28.Qxe5 Kh7! Do you think that any Grandmaster could calculate this acccurately over the board with only ten minutes left on the clock? This position will be won by the better tactician and the most imaginative attacker. That is hardly a reason to abandon my style of play. Just because it led to a balanced position would hardly be consider a reason to abandon it particularly because there are so many alternative variations that are difficult to calculate.
Just run this by your chess engines and tell me this position is easy for either side to play.
Yes, I do have the gall to view your play against Fritz 10 as "passive", so sue me. It seems to me that you are misunderstanding the concept of passivity and confusing it with dullness of play. Also, no grandmaster would play 28...Kh7 in your provided variation; all of them(okay, maybe some would play 28...Qxa2, but you get the point) would play 28...Bxa2, with a winning advantage for Black. By the way, I didn't need an engine to find that move :P
First it's hard end up with a losing position with the white pieces after three moves. There's no way to refute 1.a3, that doesn't make a good opening. 3.f3 is playable, but I wouldn't consider it a good move.
Second, whites play through out the entire game was extremely passive, 16.Bxc5 was the only time in the game when a white piece made it past the 4th rank. All you did was make a few pawn moves and shuffle your pieces around until black found a way to break thought.
May 28, 2010
0
#8
"It's no different than using an old indian setup which is probably better." - AnthonyCG
I like it and will give it a try in blitz games. Thanks. 
Here's a longer continuation of the B10 Caro-Kann - Closed Breyer Variation.
May 28, 2010
0
#9
sloughterchess wrote:
I am impressed that you view my game as passive when played against an opponent rated over 1000 points above me. If objectively equal were the only measure of the soundness of an opening then it would be regarded as "playable" by both sides. To suggest at a practical level that I can hold off my opponent for 40 moves, only to lose a complicated endgame is hardly a refutation of my new opening system; the basic assumption you make is that it is an "easy" game to play leading to a dull game. If you ever saw Kasparov beat Karpov in the Caro-Kann, it is a "dull" game too, but just like so many games played at a high level, all the complications are in the footnotes. That is the case here.
If you think of this game as easy to play, just look at the complications that arise if I had played differently on move 26 when I could have played 26.b4 instead of 26.bxa4. Do you think any Grandmaster would consider it a walk in the park after 26...Nxc3! 27.Qxc3 Qxf2 28.Qxe5 Kh7! Do you think that any Grandmaster could calculate this acccurately over the board with only ten minutes left on the clock? This position will be won by the better tactician and the most imaginative attacker. That is hardly a reason to abandon my style of play. Just because it led to a balanced position would hardly be consider a reason to abandon it particularly because there are so many alternative variations that are difficult to calculate.
Just run this by your chess engines and tell me this position is easy for either side to play.
a computer can't tell you whether either side is hard to play for a HUMAN
Those of you who consider my play "passive" would perhaps like to consider that I got a favorable endgame
against Fritz 10 in the Center Counter in only 20 moves.
That endgame is not favorable for White; if anything, I would say that Black has the advantage (White's rook is going nowhere on the f-file, and the knight is too far entrenched for its own good). By the way, your play even in that game looked like "see Black piece; exchange Black piece," which never works against Fritz 10. Yes, that is technically passive play.
"You seem to ignore one basic fact. Computers cannot play both Universal Positions and Classical chess at the same time. Either you believe that controlled space is time or you believe that time is defined as how many pieces you have moved from their original squares."
Actually, no, the most accurate answer is "it depends". Sure in some closed structures you don't even have to develop certain pieces like bishops till like move 30 sometimes, but in the beginning of the game we don't know the structure so we have to be flexible. After your 3 f3, sure you could argue that the structure is pretty solid looking, but it has many problems: first off you're putting no pressure on black's center, so good luck finding an advantage that way, second, you commit to weakened dark squares for no reason at all and get rid of the potential square f3 for the knight.
Once I played a guy in 5 minute blitz a few times, each time he moved his king to f2/f7. For me it was too hard to exploit with that amount of time (I didn't really blunder but steadily got less and less time and w/h no increment would always lose on time), but that doesn't make it good. Against strong players, or decent positional players who have some time, this setup is just very poor for white. It may take awhile to breakthrough, but it's still not good.
Black will just build and build and build until he can make strong threats on the d file and open it (and if exd5 indeed black gets plenty of piece activity), or alternatively can look towards play on the flanks if his center is solid enough.
Using new general opening theory in both the Closed Sicilian and the Caro-Kann, I have managed as a 1600 player to get perfectly playable positions. Only my 1600 endgame skills were my undoing. Clearly these strategies are acceptable at the class level.
The guiding principles of the Universal Attack are to take away squares from the Black minors and control or contest the open d-file. The diagnosic moves of the UA are either f3/g3/Nh3/Nf2 and/or c3/b3/Na3/Nc3. When you look at the Black Knights on c6 and f6, where can they go when there is a pawn on e4? Black can't play Nh5/Nf4 or Ne4 or Na5/Nb4 or Nd4. With pawns on c3 and e4 and Knights on c2 and f2 White has a bind on the central squares. If Black tries dxe4 then I recapture fxe4. You will note that following the concepts of Nimzowitch, I always overprotect the d3 square with the Knight on f2, the Queen on c2 or d2 and the Bishop on e2.
Fritz 10 loves active pieces but has no idea of the significance of controlled space so it tries to use piece pressure even when its minors have no useful squares. The result is that I use a judicious combination of pawn pushes to achieve favorable exchanges or close the position when its is generally recognized that computers do poorly
. This is the first game I ever played Fritz 10 in the Caro-Kann. Perhaps some player with better endgame skills can find a drawing resource for White.