Rat Defense: A way to make your opponent lose their opportunity to castle

If you are ever involved in the Rat Defense:

ALWAYS continue with this:

Then you can do this, forcing your opponent to lose their opportunity to castle. I call that "COMIN' DOWN TO HAVE A TRADE OF QUEENS!!!!!!"

I've played this a few times. It is very uselful.

While 2. ...e5 3. dxe5 dxe5 4. Qxd8+ does indeed prevent Black from castling, Black can avoid all of this and play 2. ...Nf6 or 2. ...g6, transposing into well-known openings.

Yeah, in most situations where the D file opens early you can trade queens to force your opponent to forfeit castling. Do keep in mind, though, that Black let this happen by playing e5 when a move like g6 or Nf6 would make more sense.

EDIT - yeah, what he said.

"Then you can do this, forcing your opponent to lose their opportunity to castle. I call that "COMIN' DOWN TO HAVE A TRADE OF QUEENS!!!!!!""

True, but once queens are off the board, castling has a much lower priority.

Stripping Black of his ability to castle:

White should sail to an easy win after that exchange and the king unable to castle!

^ lolwut

You do know that if you've moved the king, that's it-- you didn't need to hang your queen like that.

The funny thing is, you'd think that this is a great game for White. However, with an early Queen trade, White usually cannot mount enough pressure to avoid drawing this game. Black doesn't necessarily need to castle anymore. He can defend against Bishop and Knight attacks with his own. And he can manually castle anyway. This game will involve a lot of exchanges, in which case it will be advantageous for Black to have his King near the center.

If you're a premium member you can go check the win/draw/loss percentages for Black in the opening database. It's quite good :)

Yay! My opions are validated by an NM. Woohoo go me :)

I've faced this defence before, but more often in this variation.

positions this good for black is the reason most whiteplayers AVOID exchanging the epawn and the queen:) if white does not take on e5 white simply got a spaceadvantage.

i drew a higher rated player as black in a position similar to that (^^)

Off course instead of 2...e5 Black should play ...Be7. And he shouldn't move his pawn just one square!

Tigergut, I don't understand the vriation you give.  Is this supposed to be good for black?  Why?  Blacks pawns look very ill.  And, black is using two of his three minor peices defending e5.  White should be able to quickly overpower this pawn by attacking it with both knights (Nd2,0-0-0,Rhe1,Nc4)and the bishop (Bh4,Bc3) while defending his e pawn with Rhe1.  This looks like a fundamental win for white.  Blacks pawn structure is just too weak. h3 to prevent Ng4 after the pin is over should maybe be in there someplace as well.  But the point is that all of blacks pieces are tied up, so white can take his time exploiting the weakness of the double isolated pawns.  What compensation does black have for this weakness?  Even the his half open files are cloged up with his minor peices!

hm wasnt it f6 what black should play for a good rat defence?, well i just stumbled into it. or maybe f6 is just another better rat.

If queens are off the board usually it's OK not to castle. Theory has proven that black is OK in this position. White has only a slight advantage due to the pawn weaknesses on e6 and e5.

sorry my late answer genericzebra but i did not know that you had written to me:) yes the position looks like crap for black. black has doubled pawns and they are even isolated. but black is covering more of the centrum than black and the main problem for white is that there is no plan to follow. i havent played it myself but i have played against it and lost badly. i castled queenside and black moved the rooks over to the queenside and started rolling the pawns and i lost. gm Dzindzichashvili recommend it strongly for black and have a dvd on it and chesspublishing.com which is the mother of openingtheori where all the news are also recommend it:)

It is interesting that black can be equal without castling with 4. Qxd8+. The position is not a threat to black because there is no development, and less tactical threats because 18 points of fire power are off the board by move 4.

stupid without the qeens black dosen't need to castle plus i played a simillar oppening when i was  junior 

casteling is not that important on d6 e4 black plays Nc6 transposing to the pirc and white has only the option of playing the classicle no 150 attack no astrian attack