Need a solid and positional response to the Caro-Kann Advance Short Variation

Idea for best drawing chances?

Maybe these fairly recent games with the Black push on the Kside then ...0-0-0 without... c5. The idea appears to be for Black to hold the center and keep White somewhat occupied on the Kside and exchange when OK. It appears Black may even have winning chances if White overextends on a Qside attack.

Nakamura - Shankland

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1789100

Game by ...Shabalov

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1789298

I think just 5... c5 transposing into an Advance French.

Sometimes you have to put up with things you don't like...like here, you will have to play f6. In some cases, you will also have to play Nh6-f6-Nf7. Sorry.  As to what to continue with, you can play 5...c5 and just play a superior French with the bishop on f5.

LOL - Ain't that the truth!

No way to force "dull" all the time, and the line I play against the Caro-Kann is never dull!

If this guy is having a problem with the Short Variation because he can't force it to be dull, he'd be in for a rude awakening if he ever faces me.  I play the Fantasy Variation, and that's lightyears further away from dull than the Short Variation is, and the Short Variation isn't dull within its own right!

I am not interested in dodging the entire Short variation with 3…c5, which isn’t solid, safe and positional anyways.

5…f6 is definitely not what I’m looking for since I said that I was looking for something that “needs to be played very often by Grandmasters” and I also said that "I don't want lines where I need to play the ...f6 break".

And no I am not interested in castling Queenside and launching a Kingside Pawn storm… This would obviously not be solid, safe and positional.

I don’t agree with the people who say that I can’t play solid, safe and positional against the Short variation and that I will necessarily need to play the …f6 break or the move …Nh6-f7.

I never said that I didn’t like the Short variation or that I found it sharp and tactical. In fact on the contrary I love playing against it, and IMHO it’s probably one of the most solid, safe and positional variation in the entire Caro-Kann.

And it’s such a vast variation, Black has so many options, surely he doesn’t necessarily need to play the …f6 break and …Nh6-f7, Black has many other alternatives…

Let me quote GM Joe Gallagher in his book “Starting out: the Caro-Kann” :

Page 113: "The Short System is, at heart, a quiet line with lots of manoeuvring, and one certainly shouldn’t expect the same kind of fireworks as after 4. Nc3."

Page 114: "[The Short variation is] not very theoretical. It is a relatively quiet line where it is more important to understand the strategy than to memorize concrete variations."

So finding what I am looking for is definitely not impossible.

I need a line that is generally very solid, safe and positional, and it must also be objectively strong and very popular among GMs.

Skynet - I think you just don't get it and never will the way you are looking at it.

You can't force dull.  You can't force agression.  You can't force wild tactics.

Sure, some openings MORE FREQUENTLY lead to dull positions (London System), positional manouvering (Nimzo-Indian Defense), or wild tactics (Grunfeld Defense), but chess is a 2-player game, and there are lines in every opening that contradict its "reputation".

The King's Indian and Grunfeld have a reputation of being wild and tactical, but the Fianchetto Variation forces Black to play more of a manouvering game.  If Black tries to lash out pre-mature, just to try to force his style of play when it's not really there, HE WILL LOSE!

The Queen's Gambit Declined and Nimzo-Indian are both known to be openings that are Positional in nature, but if White plays the Rubinstein Variation of the QGD rather than the main line, and Black tries to force the game to be slow and positional, he will die!  The Rubinstein Variation is 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 O-O 6.Nf3 Nbd7 7.Qc2 (instead of 7.Rb1).  Black must play 7...c5, NOT 7...c6.  I don't care if Black likes to play a slow, manouvering game, Black will die if he doesn't take action immediately.  7...c6 should be answered by 8.O-O-O! and White will lash out at the Black King and win.  7...c5 makes White think twice, and here he actually has a choice between 8.Rd1 and 8.O-O-O, but by playing 7...c5, Black is aware that he needs to kick it into gear on the Queenside if White is going to go for the race with opposite side castling.

Well, dull suffers the same feat.  Sure, the London System is usually dull, but the London System is a bad answer to the Modern Defense, and White is already worse after 5 or 6 moves.  For example, 1.d4 g6 2.Nf3 Bg7 3.Bf4 d6 4.e3 Nc6 5.h3 e5! with a slight edge for Black.  The same thing goes with your Caro-Kann.  There are lines you must deal with where trying to force dull will do nothing but chop your king's head off!  You think the Short Variation is too wild.  What on earth do you do against 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nc3?  Or what about the Fantasy Variation?

Sure, if you like dull positions, the Caro-Kann is a better opening for you than say, the Sicilian Dragon.  However, even the Caro-Kann has lines that White can play where sitting back or forcing trades are just clearly inferior moves for Black, and if you are going to force those to occur, you'll end up in a lost position more often than not!  Embrace it, and go with the ride!  Until you are capable of doing that, your play will remain weak!

@ThrillerFan :

It seems you're answering a post that you didn't even read properly...

"You think the Short Variation is too wild."

No, I very clearly said above the exact contrary:

"I never said that I didn’t like the Short variation or that I found it sharp and tactical. In fact on the contrary I love playing against it, and IMHO it’s probably one of the most solid, safe and positional variation in the entire Caro-Kann."

And I didn't say I wanted a line that necessarily forces dull positions whatever White does. Read what I said carefully in the first post:

“I would like to know what is the line which on average leads to the most solid, positional, safe, quiet, drawish, slow, boring and strategic positions.”

The keyword is “on average”. The White player will also have their say on the character of the game. But I want a line which gives the White player less options that generally lead to wild tactical games. So statistically speaking I will get more games with a quiet and positional nature.

For example against 1. d4:

If Black plays the Slav, White has a few options to make the game wild and tactical, by playing the Geller Gambit for example, but it’s objectively bad. Most of White’s options against the Slav will lead to positional games.

But if Black plays the KID instead, White will have so many different options all leading to wild tactical games. On the contrary if White wants to play something solid and positional he doesn’t have many good options except to play the Fianchetto variation (or the Exchange variation, but it’s bad).

That’s why it is said that the KID generally leads to sharp and tactical positions, while the Slav generally leads to more slow and solid positions.

To answer your question of what I play against 3. Nc3:

By playing the Advance Shirov variation, White is basically saying “I will make the game wild and tactical at all cost, even if it means losing my advantage”.

White has sacrificed his advantage in order to steer the game into a wild mess.

I have two options:

- I can either choose a rare line which tries to steer the game into more quiet waters, but this line would be objectively bad for Black.

- Or I can just go into the main line, which is sharp tactical, but objectively White has no advantage.

I obviously chose the second option. So against the Shirov variation I play the main line: 4. Nc3 e6 5. g4 Bg6 6. Nge2 c5 7. h4 h5 8. Nf4 Bh7 9. Nxh5 Nc6 10. dxc5 Bxc5

It’s because here I don’t have any other choice. Other tries like 4…Qb6 or 4…h5 are just rubbish IMHO.

But here, against the Short variation, the situation is completely different.

White keeps his usual advantage – there’s no way for Black to refute White’s opening.

But Black has many possible lines which generally lead to positional, solid and strategic games – and these lines are not bad for Black!

So why would you not want me to pick one of those lines?

If there was one line for Black which was clearly superior to all the others than I would pick this line for sure even if it generally led to sharp and tactical games. But there is no such thing in the Short variation.

And to answer your question of what I play against the Fantasy variation: I play 3…e6 4. Nc3 Bb4 which generally leads to solid positions for Black. I have no problem against this variation.

Now let’s try to stay more on-topic. Let’s stop speaking about other variations of the Caro-Kann, and even more importantly let’s stop speaking about other completely different openings…

____________________

@pfren:

Well, this line still doesn’t fit the criteria of “needing to be played very often by Grandmasters”. By "very often" I do mean "really really often"!

And as for the quotes from GM Gallagher, well then let me quote a more recent source.

GM Lars Schandorff in his book “Grandmaster Repertoire: The Caro-Kann” (2010).

Here is his very first paragraph in “Chapter 12 – Short Variation” [Page 114]:

“The positional Short Variation is one of the cornerstones of the whole 3.e5 complex. White calmly completes his development before taking any direct action. He is confident that his space advantage will give him the easier play.”

Notice the words “positional” and “calmly”. Okay, he then also says that this variation can also lead to sharp play. But this variation is still probably closer to “positional” than “tactical”.

GM Lars Schandorff also seems to believe that if Black wants a calm and positional game he should probably choose 5…Nd7 or 5…Ne7 over 5…c5 (unfortunately Schandorff prefers sharp and tactical games so he only covers 5…c5 in his book).

So we should probably focus this thread on 5...Ne7 or 5...Nd7.

Thanks. Very insightful stuff. Though you seem to be very pessimistic about Black’s chances.

I don’t think I like the Nd7-Ne7-h6-g5 plan for Black. It doesn’t look too solid and positional from my point of view (I don’t really like moving my g-Pawn in the opening, it looks a little scary).

But I think I like the Nd7-Ne7-Bg6-Nf5 plan!

Searching in many game databases, I have also found two other plans which I think I like:

The first plan is to play …Ne7 followed by …Nc8 (there are a lot of different move orders for this plan). It’s an interesting idea. But is it really objectively good?

The second plan is Nd7-Ne7-h6-Bh7 followed by either Nf5 or Ng6 (here too there are many different move orders for this plan).

Any insight on these plans?

And what about the move orders that we should use to execute each of those plans?

Isn't the second game posted the current mainline caro??

Thanks for the games IM pfren.

In the first game, maybe ...0-0 isn't best, since the advance of the g & h pawns already weakens the Kside. In the games I mentioned in an earlier post it appeared ...0-0-0 might be better suited. If White wants to then attack Qside the time to realign might allow Black's space advantage and eventual open files to get there first. 

The second game might be a example on what Black shouldn't do with the QN. It appeared it went ...Nd7, back ...Nb8, ...Nc6, back...Nb8, back ...Nd7, then finally exchanged on c5 giving White a seemingly very nice outpost. All between moves 5 to 22 or 35% of Black's play. Given the loss of time and maybe bad exchange, whatever Black's plan was it probably can't be judged as very productive.

14. h4! certainly punished what I thought was critical tempo losses 12...Bg6 and 13...Nxg6.

But as you mentioned 11...0-0 already put Black in a tough spot. After 12. Bd3, I'd take a long think if I was Black. I'd guess one option is to try for some Qside counter with 12...c5 aiming to break up the center and take whatever advantage there is with White's B on c1 and the N on b3.

I'd leave Black's B where it is and if White Bxf5 might even go with ...exf5 looking for f4 so White has to weaken own K cover if wanting to crack open the Kside. Without the White KB, it's unclear whether Black's light square weakness by the K can be easily exploited.

16...c4 appeared a big mistake 16... cxd4 might've been more natural. Maybe at least hindering the very nice attack you put together.

Hmm.  How about 11...Kf8 as a way of castling without forsaking the h6 pawn?  (Idea of ...Kg8 ...R(a8)f8)  Or is that too exotic?