Sokolsky Opening. Has anyone had success persisting with the lines

correctly played. IF black plays an over ambitious e5, the cxd5, and e4 motif gives white a very pleasant game, with a lovely square of c4 for a knight to perpetually threaten b6. If black wants to keep his equality, he shoudnt get ambitious like this.

It might be better than the game move, but doesn't White then hold on to his pawn with 35.f3? Not letting Black go a pawn up? Probably still a game at that point.

yes, it is still a game. 35.f3,... does hold the pawn for white. But pawns are even. at least for now, white has option of a5xb6 and possibly infiltration with the rook. But before that white will have to deal with 35.f3,d3 winning a tempo on the bishop. And possibly d2 under the right circumstances. Black also has options of Nd5 and Rd7 possibly. white has to hold a pawn on e4, and/or spend at least a move cause of the potential tactic against his rooks. there's a lot of variables on how it could play out.

It might well be that the game could have continued, but it all depends how much time Black had remaining on the clock.

In the note to White's 35th move, it indicates that Black had 13 minutes (after 34 moves for him, White having 30 after 35 moves).

I recently played a game that ended in a victory, only due my opponent not being able to continue all of his correspondence ICCF games, because of private reasons. I think the game would otherwise have ended in a draw.

I present it here, with comments from myself. Any comments from others here are most welcome.

I have not looked in depth, but at first glance, I might actually prefer Black.

Looking at ...Ng6, followed by taking twice on h4, sacrificing the Bishop and retaining the Knight.

This position is very reminiscent of the KIA vs French with colors reversed. In the normal KIA vs French, after 1.e4 e6 2.d3 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.Ngf3 c5 5.g3 Nc6 6.Bg2 Be7 7.O-O O-O 8.Re1 b5 9.e5 Nd7 10.Nf1 a5 11.h4 Ba6 12.N1h2 b4, it is White sacrificing for the attack on the king, Black going for a raging attack on the queenside that White abandons, and almost all endgames favor Black, but almost all of his pieces are blocked out from defending the king.

We see the same here with colors reversed. Black says bleep the queenside. Sacrifice the Bishop for the 2 pawns. The f3-square is dominated by Black in which a black knight or pawn is likely to reside in long term. Queen comes in and/or the pawns get pushed.

Again, this is not based on in-depth analysis, but cursory glance, I prefer Black. It is a question of how fast can White destroy the queenside and can he hold his king at the same time?

Erwin, good game my friend. 23.Nc7,... looks interesting to me. it would probably bring more tactics into the game. There were some other moves I would like to comment on, but I don't have time right now.

nh3 is a very interesting try, but after the hard to spot g5! black is a little better.

this idea, of black of playing d5-c5, re8 bg4 (with bishop on f6) is really the most white has to memorize in these lines. qa5 is also another line. So the order in which you pursue, nd2, ne2 and bg2 has an surprisingly deep effect on your options. You obviously shoudnt let white get a free pawn although fortunately, even if you do, blacks extra d pawn is so bad, white has excellent drawing chances.
white should have played 10.ne2. after bg4 they are two choices. One is the Hansen line which i find bizarrely intriguing 11.a4! (11.a3!? is a more modest version of the idea) 11.nc6 12.ra2! and amazingly, all the threads dissapear, you can castle safely. the second idea is almost as provocative. just play 11.h3 bxe2 12.kxe2! nc6 13. kf1 and all of a sudden, black realizes, that the permanent weakness on d5 is prob not worth a slight lead in development or white having to hand castle with kf1-g2-h2 (or kf1, bf3, kg2)

@ThillerFan I think in the final position so far, I knew of the sacrifice on h4, but I had found some ways to keep the battle going and even. My notes are seomewhere.

@chessterd5 I had thought of playing 23. Nc7, but as far as I remembered it didn't turn out that well. Okay worth to look again.

@darkunorthodox Perhaps I made it too complicated with the knigt to h3; indeed Black spotted the good countermove with pawn to g5, and from there-on I was kind of struggeling. Your ideas mentioned in your post were kind of missed by me, eventhough I have Hansen's book ;-)

Once again, lessons to be learned! Although I thought playing on Black's d5-pawn made the game going and must have had Black scratching his head also. During the game I also started having doubts of playing Nh3, because my King got more or less stuck on h1.

I have not learned the c3 lines in the mainline 1...,e5 variation. but to me, they remind me of London type positions. Also, in practical play, whites "problem" peice seems to be the correct development of the C1 knight.

This was certainly the case in the early c4 line, where white has the choice of early nc3, but if the knight is on d5 which is quite often after c4, d5 cxd5 nxd5, Nxc3 pretty much ruined whites pawn structure. White often played qc2 then nc3 or qa4-rc1-then nc3. generally if white can change the clumsy c3 knight for the annoying d5 knight without wrecking his pawn structure, he was doing very well
in the c3 lines, it almost always goes to d2.whether whites goes g3 or the bishop goes to d3 like some lines with ba5.

Here is a current running correspondence game, which will be commentated when it is finished. Nonetheless, with the capture of a rook, I think Black's game at the moment is actually already lost. (I will show another running game later this week, where Black is defending with the KID variation and opens an attack, in which I am much more uncomfortable.)

Here is the current situation on the board with the variation of Nf6 and e6:

those bishop x-raying the poor rook, exquisite!

well I have almost finished reading Carsten Hansens book for the first time. I will have to read it a couple times more of course. I have no idea why anyone would say 1.b4,... is limited theory. As white, you have to know all the normal defenses to 1.d4, as well as the 1...,e5 mainline, and all the independent sidelines. this opening can be super tactical or super positional. and I love it!

I did play it, it seems to be completely sound.

Say, why isn't there any attention to Lapshun's and Conticello's opening book on the Sokolsky, published in 2008, entitled "Play b4!"

I own all 3 b4 books from the 21st century. The one you mention, b4 Thoery and Practice, and Hansen's book from 2021.

That said, while I didn't do particularly well this weekend, scoring 2 out of 5 via 1 win, 2 draws, and 2 losses, the win was a Sokolsky, so thought I'd share it here:

nice game Thrillerfan. I think the black queen belongs on e7 in most of the c4 lines. the bishop on f6 was a horrible piece for the entire game.

Wow. That was a neat Sokolsky win!!