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The Two Knights - A tricky repertoire for White

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.

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Scotch Game

The opening known as the Scotch Game owes its name to a correspondence match played between the cities of Edinburgh and London between 1824 and 1828. In it, however, the Scots first had the black pieces and lost to 3.d4, but later took their revenge by successfully opening with 3.d4 with the white pieces. At the start of the 20th century interest in this direct method of play had noticeably waned, but then in 1990 no less a player than Garry Kasparov opened with the Scotch Game in the 14th game of his WCh match (Lyon/New York) against Anatoly Karpov at a moment when the scores were level. This brought the sleeping beauty of an opening back to life. This game was in fact drawn, but in his next game with White Kasparov repeated his “experiment” – and this time he was successful. The result was a boom in the Scotch. A whole host of top players rushed into the variation and what the day before had been considered old-fashioned was suddenly chic and modern.

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