Which is black’s advantage that is decisive for him to win (he wins 90% of the games)?
Please, help me…
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Dec 31, 2021
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#3
This line also comes via 1.d4 d6 2.c4 e5!
Lakdawala covers it in 1...d6 Move by Move.
Some White players think they can transpose to an old Indian, but Black has not committed the Knight. 3.Nc3 is =/+.
The best move is 3.Nf3, which gives Black a teeny tiny edge.
The worst move other than hanging a piece is 3.dxe5 dxe5 4.Qxd8+ Kxd8, which is borderline between =/+ and -/+ (true assessment, not what weak stockfish 10 says here).
The problem is simple. The Queens are gone. There is no dire need to castle. Black's position is nice and open. The e5-pawn controls central squares and does not impede any of his pieces.
The White pawn on c4 impedes White's LSB and light squares in general, hence the advantage for Black.
In today's modern day books, they all recommend 2.e4 against 1...d6. 1.d4 d6 2.e4! And White can enter a Pirc or Saemisch KID (3.f3) against 2...Nf6.
With your 1.c4 move order, you are best off avoiding 2.d4 against 1...e5.
White is not already lost after 4.Qxd8+ Kxd8, that's not why white is losing 90% of games. White is losing those games because the position is slightly worse for white, *but* the white players *think* the position is clearly better for them! The mismatch between their ambition and the actual position is what is causing all the losses. This is a sort of extreme negative example of Steinitz's theory of attack. Steinitz proposed that a player should not attack unless they had an advantage already. Here the white players have a slight disadvantage but they go on the "attack" against the uncastled black king, and the attack backfires horribly. If instead white plays carefully after exchanging queens, it should be possible to defend and reach a draw eventually. Even better would be to avoid 3.dxe5? (the real mistake), as Tarrasch would have pointed out this is a trade of white's d4 pawn for black's *d6* pawn (not the e5 pawn).
I have been trying to search for new openings, and I found this (It has been tried hundreds of times by masters, so it isn’t new).
The question is, why does black win 90% of the games? Black can’t castle and, even he has a pawn in the center, white can still get the center with e4 at any moment.