The thing about the Karpov game is that Karpov missed a win on move 19 or so. It's something you really want to look at if you're going to play this.
St. George Defense 1...a6
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Rumo75 hat geschrieben:
JMB2010 hat geschrieben:
Actually the O Kelly with 3.d4 is "very good for black." He can play Nf6 and e5 because the b5 square is covered and already has a slight edge. That's why I'm favoring 1.e4 a6 2.Nf3 for white, because if 2...c5 is played then white can choose between 3.c3 and 3.c4, which both have good reputations.
AFAIK white has good chances for an advantage with 6.Nf3 and 7.Bc4. But I have to admit that I'm not really an expert on this line, and neither do I have a database at hand, being at work at the moment.
Being at home now, I have been able to look up this line in a database. There are not many games in which strong players went for 3.d4 - quite understandable, why refuse the wonderful position that you can reach without much effort by playing 3.c3 or 3.c4? But the few games that went 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 a6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5 6.Nf3 Bb4 7.Bc4 scored in white's favour.
There are many ways to try and take advantage of 1. e4 a6
Here is one:
here is another line:
Agree with you Rumo75. Also white has not yet commited to c4. I remember a game Karpov annotated in his game collection that started 1. e4 e6 2. d4 c5 3. d5 At this point Karpov thought that with precise play his position was close to won and backed it up with analysis. It is hard to beleive that injecting a6 into the mix is an improvement, for the reasons you have given.