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For new Bongclouders, the Forced March variation is an ultra-sharp variation of the classical Bongcloud(1.e5 e4 2.Ke2) as it essentially allows what appears to be a gaping backdoor to the back rank. If black takes the gambit and marches into the gaping hole, usually he has not noticed the huge number of white pieces swarming around his own back rank! Now he cannot take advantage of the hole as he is forced to defend his back rank with every move.
The Forced March variation goes like this:1. e5 e4 2.Ke2 Ke7 3.Kc3 Kf7(now both sides avoid confrontation) 4.Kb4?!
In the Romantic Era of Bongcloud Chess, this would have been hailed as an excellent move, but strong defensive systems proved that this just wastes a tempo. HOWEVER:
4. ...Kg6? 5.h5! Creating a hole in the defence. If black rushes to exploit it, white can develop his pieces on the queenside and force black to use all his moves defending. Now comes the theoretical novelty: 5. ...h4(standard, to prevent white from pawn storming the kingside if his attack fails) 6.Nf3?!
This is the theoretical novelty. Instead of developing on the queenside, white develops on the kingside... why? Well, in the game I played(I was black in that came), my opponent cunningly attacked my queenside, I defended accurately, but then I noticed something:in a single move, he could transfer all his pieces to the kingside!!
Eventually, he saced his queen to obiliterate the important defending rook on h8, then exchanged pawns on h6 and proceeded to destroy my carefully built defence; only it was all stranded on the queenside.
But this is not a refutation to the Forced March! If I had played Kg5 after Nf3, I would have won due to the unorthodox but inspired and risky plan of using my king to force the other king back, before returning to take advantage of the ragged pawn hole on the kingside. I played this line against Houdini Bongcloud 6.7 several times and won easily every time.