Beating Inferior Openings: 4.Bc4 in the Four Knights Revisited

In his July 2014 ChessCafe.com review of Or Cohen's A Vigorous Chess Opening Repertoire for Black (2013) Carsten Hansen criticizes this Petroff repertoire book for giving three pages to the Four Knights with 4.Bc4?!, which Hansen considers to be a line that "should have received little or no mention." As I have argued in my first posting on this opening, Hansen is simply wrong when it comes to amateur chess. Amateurs need to learn how to refute such lines, which they will see orders of magnitude more often than the latest theoretical lines played by titled players. More to the point are Hansen's other criticisms of Cohen's book, notably its excessive reliance on long lines of computer analysis and its lack of clarity on its intended audience. Cohen's coverage of the 4.Bc4?! variation of the Four Knights is appropriate for rank amateurs, but its long lines without verbal comment are hardly useful for them. Most amateurs below about 1900 USCF need, I humbly submit, analysis like that offered in this blog's coverage of this line: lots of verbal and visual explanation of the most basic issues in an opening.

Beating Inferior Openings: Meeting 4.Bc4 in the Four Knights (part II).

In the first part the Four Knights after 4.Bc4 Nxe4 5.Bxf7+ was analyzed. In all lines black is much better. The lines analyzed here start with 4.Bc4 Nxe4 5.Nxe4 d5 (fig 1), which forks white's pieces, regaining the lost material.

Fig 1. Position after 4.Bc4 Nxe4 5.Nxe4 d5.

What is the best way for white to give back the material?

In this position, white has a number of options, only one of which does not hand the opening advantage to black. The main moves are 6. Bxd5, 6.Bb5?, and 6.Bd3. Other moves are, of course, possible, but these are the most commonly played ones. Let's consider each of them.

Beating Inferior Openings: The First Installment of an Occasional Series (Meeting 4.Bc4 in the Four Knights)

Cyrus Lakdawala writes in his book The Four Knights: Move by Move that black players who open with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 are likely to be poorly versed in Four Knights theory because they encounter the Ruy Lopez (that begins with 3.Bb5) more often than the Four Knights that white invites with 3.Nc3. This is simply wrong!

To be more precise, although Lakdawala may be right for master-level games, he is wrong when it comes to rank amateurs (rated 2000 USCF and below). Amateurs often lack either the time or inclination to study opening theory in detail, and when they do it is often because they obsess about one system. (Just think of all the Najdorf and Dragon Sicilian fanatics.) They take shortcuts, and taking shortcuts means deviating early from main lines to cut down the amount of theory that you need to learn. The Four Knights is precisely such an opening. Instead of learning the reams of theory in the Ruy Lopez (not to mention the Petroff), you can just learn the Four Knights. Even better, you can focus your efforts on one variation such as the Scotch Four Knights, and your opening study problems are solved! I don't play the Ruy Lopez (at least not yet!). Instead, I play the Petroff, and in my last thirteen over the board USCF rated games that began 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 white only played the Petroff main nine continuations of 3.Ne5 and 3.d4 three times. White in two of the three games was a class A player, showing that perhaps real attention to opening theory begins in class A. 3.d4 was played only once, and I had seen it so infrequently that I had forgotten the opening theory and lost because of an error in the opening. Five of the thirteen games continued 3.Nc3, inviting a Four Knights, which I played. Four of the games continued with the modest 3.d3, and one continued with 3.Bc4, playing in the style of the Italian Game.

Taking Advantage of Blunders

When your opponent blunders and loses material, he often has compensation in the form of a gain of time or better piece placement. Consequently, it is important to be very accurate when attempting to reel in the point after gaining material. In the following game, my opponent blundered in the opening. After 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. Bb5 Nd4 5. Nxe5 Qe7 6. Nc4?? c6 7. Ba4 b5 8. d3 we reached the following position with black to move. How should black capture?

8...bxa4 or 8...bxc4, which is best?

I chose 8...bxa4 on the general grounds that the bishop seemed dangerous on the same diagonal as the king. This is wrong. Concrete analysis is needed. From that it is clear that the knight on c4 is a much more dangerous piece as it threatens to land on the weak d6 square. Further, after bxc4 it will take some work to get the bishop on a4 back in the game.

I won in the end, but a better opponent could have equalized as the following analysis shows: hypernova2-sputnick, 45 45 game on the ICC.

Lessons to learn:

1. 1. Don't make decisions on general grounds alone; rely on concrete analysis instead.
2. 2. Consolidating and winning after gaining material is not always easy; it requires work.