Originally posted by Fat LadyUp to what point would you say it was still an opening?Until move 9 the moves mathced those of a correspondence gm: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1426491&view=1 (the game is still in progress), also some otb gm's have played this line with black.
Terrible opening play by Black. White basically had all his own way in that game. I was surprised by the exchange sacrifice, but it seemed to work out ok.
I must say I'm surprised that this is a recognised line. It was 7...g6 in particular which I thought was bad, it just seemed to weaken Black's kingside too much.
Perhaps the mistake was allowing White to play Bh6, or not castling queenside. Sometimes one side does deliberately keep their king in the middle, uncastled, but White didn't have any problems breaking the centre open in this game.