The secret of its success may be its anti-positional look. The pawn thrust g2-g4 is often so counter-intuitive that it’s a perfect way to confuse your opponents and disrupt their position. Ever since World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik started using it to defeat the elite grandmasters of his day, it has developed, on all levels of play, into an ever more popular and attractive way to fight for the initiative.
Grandmaster Dmitry Kryakvin owes a substantial part of his successes as a chess player to the g2-g4 attack. In this book he shows how it can be used to defeat Black in a number of important Closed and Semi-Closed Defences and Flank Openings: the Dutch, the Queen’s Gambit, the Nimzo-Indian, the King’s Indian, the Slav and several variations of the English Opening.
With lots of instructive examples, Kryakvin explains the ins and outs of the attack on the g-file: the typical ways to gain tempi and keep the momentum, and the manoeuvres that will maximize your opponent’s problems. After working with this book you will be fully equipped to use this modern battering ram to define the battlefield. You will have fun and win games!
Dmitry Kryakvin is an International Grandmaster from Russia and an experienced chess trainer and author.
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Contents
006 Explanation of symbols
007 Preface
009 Part I Botvinnik’s heritage
010 Chapter 1: A cultural check
021 Chapter 2: Heavy artillery
034 Chapter 3: Isaak Lipnitsky’s favourite position
039 Part II The Dutch Defence
041 Chapter 4: The Krejcik Gambit
049 Chapter 5: Attacking with a cast-iron alibi
065 Chapter 6: A pistol shot against the Stonewall
075 Part III The Queen’s Gambit Declined
076 Chapter 7: Strolls with the Queen’s Gambit
105 Part IV The Nimzo-Indian Defence
106 Chapter 8: Even if the Devil is helping you
124 Chapter 9: In the footsteps of a great rivalry
131 Part V The Anti-Nimzo-Indian
132 Chapter 10: The Groningen Attack, or Zviagintsev-Krasenkow Variation
148 Part VI The Slav Defence
152 Chapter 11: The Shabalov-Shirov Gambit
194 Chapter 12: Inverted chess
217 Part VII The King’s Indian Defence
219 Chapter 13: The Portisch-Gipslis Variation
233 Chapter 14: The Riazantsev Variation
244 Chapter 15: The secret nooks and crannies of the Makogonov Variation
257 Part VIII The Grünfeld Indian Defence
258 Chapter 16: The Murey Attack
264 Chapter 17: 21st century creations
275 Index of names
281 Index of variations
287 Bibliography
288 Author’s biography