Originally posted by Tanuki Well, starting as white at least. But it does get me some good positions..and alas some horrible ones. But oh well, here's looking at you 1900!
Surely this depends on your choice of opening. In many queens pawn openings, it is pretty poor (?).
Clearly it has much merit in some lines, but I dont think we can hail it as the Holy Grail of chess!
PS - you would really struggle playing it with black 😉
The top board in the OTB team I play for always opens with 1.Nc3 and he manages to get good results with it (his ECF grade is 178, about 2200 ELO).
I've spent quite some time analysing his games and I can't work out what he does at all. The only thing I've managed to pinpoint is that without a White pawn on c4, Black has to expand more on the queenside if he wants to attack White there and that sometimes makes it easier for White to counterattack.
I much prefer to have pawns on c4 & d4, with the knight on c3, or else pawns on c3 and d4 with the knight on d2.
"A Complete Defense for Black" by Raymond Keene and Byron Jacobs proposes a repertoire in which Black plays 1...Nc6 against any first move by White. It is an excellent book, with tons of complete games. I'm returning to OTB tournament chess, and I plan to play either 1...Nc6 or 1...b6 in all of my games with Black. (I recently purchased "Play 1...b6" by Christian Bauer.)
Edit: A new book by IM Christoph Wisnewski called "Play 1...Nc6" might be worth a look. It has received a couple of excellent reviews. The title is a bit misleading though, because against 1 d4, Wisnewski says Black should play 1...d5, followed by 2...Nc6 against virtually any second move by White. That move order avoids the 1 d4 Nc6 2 d5 variations.
EXTRA EXTRA 1.Nc3 Helps break 1800!
15 Jan '08 19:30
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