Fantasy Variation

Anyone knows where the name 'fantasy variation'  of the caro kann comes from? I cannot seem to find anything on the internet. I cannot wrap my head around it lol

=Tartakower variation. It reminded me one of Tartakower aphorisms:

Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders.

So, clearly, Tartakower lived in a fairy tale inventing fantasy variations ... in order to commit blunders more easily LMAO.

 lol m8.. but i really want to know why fantasy... lol

I have no idea why 3.f3 in the Caro-Kann is called the "Fantasy variation", but I almost exclusively play 3.f3 against the Caro-Kann ;)

Chess openings are generally named after four things:

• Famous players, generally the first or most famous proponent (Winawer, Rubinstein, Tarrasch, etc)
• Nationalities in some way associated with the development of the opening (French, English, Cambridge Springs, etc)
• Actual chess characteristics of the position (Exchange variations, Poisoned Pawn variations, Fianchetto variations, etc)
• Completely random stuff

 With the first three, you can get a more or less accurate sense of why the opening is named that.  When it comes to random stuff, though, good luck, your guess is as good as any.  The Sicilian Dragon is said to be named after a constellation; the Black Lion is named because … well, lions are cool.  Things get weirder, such as the Orangutan, the Hippo, the Nescafe Frappe, the Macho Grob and, perhaps best of all, the Frankenstein-Dracula variation.

Why these names?  I’ve heard lots of interesting theories, but I think it’s all conjecture.  It’s worth nothing that most of these are pretty off-beat, with few famous practitioners, which perhaps explains the need for more creative naming.

The term "fantasy variation" is used elsewhere in chess literature from time to time, I imagine possibly moreso before it became the name of this variation? Something like... "and if Black tries to keep the extra piece a fantasy variation runs like this... and everything looks solid, but then sac, sac, mate." (Here is the first instance of such writing I could find, Andrew Soltis uses it twice in this Google books sample... I had to Google it  "-minus caro" to find it https://books.google.com/books?id=EXggDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA39-IA26&lpg=PA39-IA26&dq=fantasy+variation+-caro+chess&source=bl&ots=cob_nn_Fdb&sig=Lk-1aCQ6KO2QcW_l5f5Mo3nFkx8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4hpuOx-rTAhVHx1QKHfzJBlYQ6AEIRDAG#v=onepage&q=fantasy%20variation%20-caro%20chess&f=false ) It could be a player/analyst, someone looked at f3 and described the play if Black takes and tries to keep the pawn similarly as "a fantasy variation" and it stuck... this is just a guess.

Its called the fantasy variation because you fantasize of your opponent taking you e pawn for having an double pawn center

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all I know is I hated it and fell in love with the mieses when I was getting it confused with the alapin diemer french and am punishing EVERY player who accepts f3, lets me play Bc4 and then tries to Nf6/Bg4 me. oh the Bxf7+ carnage in THE MAIN LINE

inserting Be3 before the blackmar/alapin diemeresque f3 works so much better for me.

Levy Rozman has a video on the fantasy caro kann where he says, "That's why [the variation] is called the fantasy, because you have a fantasy land of ideas."