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Welcome to Scid Daily, a daily newsletter providing Scid users with hints and tips, opening theory ideas and a bit of chess entertainment. Each day you'll find here an opening report (computer-generated by Scid with ScidBase), a recent novelty (a new move in a relatively common opening position), a chess tactic, a classic endgame study, and hints for getting more out of Scid. User feedback and suggestions are appreciated.

A Complete Index of all past Scid Daily editions is now available.

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13 Mar 2004

The Opening Report today is an interesting line in the Nimzowitsch variation of the Nimzo-Indian, and the novelty is an interesting idea in the Open Catalan.

Opening Report
E45 Nimzo-Indian: Nimzowitsch, 6.Ng3

Opening Report: HTML / PDF format
179 games, White scores 53%
In the Nimzo-Indian (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4) with 4.e3, the Nimzowitsch/Fischer variation (4...b6) remains a reasonable alternative to the main lines of 4...c5 and 4...O-O. After the usual 5.Ne2 Ba6, most common and thematic is 6.a3 but many grandmasters have preferred 6.Ng3 (our report position). 6.Ng3 makes perfect sense to me: why waste a move on 6.a3 (and more importantly, deprive the c1-Bishop of the a3 square) if Black is probably going to play Bxc3 anyway?

Black has a few choices here:

(a) 6...c5 is uncommon but I think Black is fine after 7.d5 exd5 8.cxd5 Bxf1.

(b) 6...h5!? suits enterprising players, forcing 7.h4 and intending pressure against the White kingside after 7...Bb7 8.Bd2 Bd6, but obviously four bishop moves by move 8 come at a cost in development.

(c) I don't like 6...O-O much but it is a popular choice, often continuing 7.e4 d5 8.cxd5 Bxf1 9.Kxf1.

(d) 6...Bxc3+ 7.bxc3 d5 is the main line. White has two important choices here. 8.Qf3 is less common, with only a minimal White edge in my opinion after 8...O-O 9.cxd5 exd5 10.Bxa6 Nxa6. The more common choice is 8.Ba3, where White is willing to gambit the c4 pawn to prevent kingside castling. White gets excellent central compensation after 8...dxc4 9.e4 Qd7 10.Be2 Nc6 11.O-O O-O-O 12.Qc2 h5 13.Rfd1 (6 report games), so Black usually plays 8...Bxc4 9.Bxc4 dxc4. Here White can regain the pawn (and have a small queenless middlegame edge) with 10.Qa4+ Qd7 11.Qxc4 Qc6 12.Qxc6+ Nxc6 13.c4, or play 10.e4 Qd7 11.O-O with perhaps not quite enough compensation, since the light-squared bishops have left the board.

Opening Novelty
E04 Catalan/Semi-Slav

Gleizerov 2589 - Pridorozhni 2493
Cappelle la Grande FRA / 2004.02.28 / 1/2-1/2 (44)

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.g3 dxc4 6.Bg2 b5 7.Ne5 Nd5 8.a4 is a Catalan position often reached from Semi-Slav move orders. Here Black played the new 8...b4!? with 9.Ne4 Be7 but perhaps 9...c3!? is the logical continuation, aiming to lose back the extra c-pawn in the most disruptive way possible. Previous moves here were 8...Bb4 (with several wins to White) and 8...f6 (Gelfand-Shirov, Paris 1992).

Tactic
Douven 2430 - Greenfeld 2550
Groningen NED / 1988 / 1-0
1.? +-

Solution below
Endgame
Reti , 1928
1.? =
Another classic from Reti.
Solution below
Scid Hint
Editing Raw PGN

On rare occasions, you may want to edit the raw PGN content of a game. For example, you may have entered a long game only to realise you got the move order wrong in the opening. To manually edit the PGN representation of the current game, open the Import window (Ctrl+Shift+I) and press the Paste current game button; then make your changes and press Import.

FEN Notation of Daily Positions
Opening Report:  rn1qk2r/p1pp1ppp/bp2pn2/8/1bPP4/2N1P1N1/PP3PPP/R1BQKB1R b KQkq
Novelty:  rnbqkb1r/p4ppp/2p1p3/1p1nN3/P1pP4/2N3P1/1P2PPBP/R1BQK2R b
Tactic:  b4rk1/5ppp/6q1/rB2p3/Pp2P3/3QP3/1P4PP/2RR2K1 w
Endgame:  5K2/k7/4P1p1/8/8/8/4b3/8 w

Scid Daily Editions

This table shows only the most recent Scid Daily editions. A Complete Index of all past editions is available.

DateReportNoveltyHint
08 Mar '04 E97 King's Indian  B90 Sicilian Najdorf  My Player Names 
09 Mar '04 B32 Sicilian Kalishnikov  A40 English Defence  Filter Graph 
10 Mar '04 D85 Modern Exchange Grünfeld  B33 Sicilian Pelikan  Move Entry 
11 Mar '04 B07 Pirc  A33 Symmetrical English  Tree Training 
12 Mar '04 B90 Sicilian Najdorf  D37 QGD Classical  Favorite Reports 
13 Mar '04 E45 Nimzo-Indian  E04 Catalan/Semi-Slav  Editing Raw PGN 
14 Mar '04 C13 French Chatard-Alekhine  B56 Open Sicilian  Clipbase vs. Clipboard 
15 Mar '04 C13 French Chatard-Alekhine  C02 French Advance  Opening Report 
16 Mar '04 C13 French Chatard-Alekhine  C80 Open Spanish  Piece Tracker 
17 Mar '04 A45 Trompowsky  A41 Modern  Annotation Symbols 
18 Mar '04 A21 English  D45 Semi-Slav  File Finder 
19 Mar '04 D16 Slav  E97 Kings Indian  Compressed PGN files 
20 Mar '04 B01 Scandinavian 2...Qxd5  C00 French Two Knights  Toolbar 
21 Mar '04 B01 Scandinavian 2...Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd6  E13 Queens Indian  Best Tree Games 
22 Mar '04 B01 Scandinavian 2...Nf6  C42 Russian Game  EPD Files 

Tactic Solution

1.Rc8! Qb6 2.Qd8! 1-0

Endgame Solution

1.Ke7 g5 2.Kd6 g4 3.e7 Bb5 4.Kc5 Be8 5.Kd4 Kb7 6.Ke4 Kc7 6.Kf4 Bh5 7.e8=Q =


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Page updated: 08 Apr 2004