The Barry Attack

I recently came upon a very interesting system known as the "Barry Attack", which starts off as 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Bf4 Bg7 5.e3 O-O 6.Be2, with the idea of Ne5 and h4-h5 with a kingside attack. I've been looking online for some games with it, and here are two that I found

I.Rogers-J.Pribyl 1985


I. Rogers-G. Canfell 1988


M.Hebden-N. Birnboim 1992



Anyone have any thoughts or ideas, or any stories to relate about it's effectiveness OTB? It seems like it would be a good surprise weapon for someone hoping for a King's Indian.

If you're interested in this opening, you might take a look at "A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire" by Aaron Summerscale. A good portion of the book examines the Barry against the King's Indian and the similiar 150 Attack against the Pirc/Modern. As usual in books on offbeat stuff, the author sites games where strong players were "surprised" by the opening and lost, sometimes in spectacular fashion. After a while, effective lines of play have been found that take away the surprise value of the line, at least where titled players are concerned. For those of us who don't have NM, IM, or GM in front of our names, who knows?

Actually, you'll have a hard time finding that book. It is out of print. Palliser wrote a fine book on this, the 150, and the C-Z just last year.

The Barry is covered in:

D-Pawn Attacks
and also ...
Modern Ideas Behind the Opening by Gary Lane