Revolution Revisited - Part 9: The Hungarian Gruenfeld

The Russian System of the Gruenfeld is characterized by the early Qb3 move, which practically forces Black to surrender the center. The black knight remains on f6, blocking Bg7, thus making the necessary advance c7-c5 more difficult to accomplish. The resulting positions have been debated for the past sixty years. The main line of ...Nfd7 is named after Smyslov, while Kasparov mainly employed the ...Na6 line in his battles against Karpov. This video focuses on the third option, ...a6, known as the Hungarian Variation. Obviously the right name as the efforts of Hungarian Grandmasters Barczay, Sax and Adorjan deserve to be recognized. All the same, in my days as a young master in Leningrad, a group of players headed by our local hero IM Mark Tseitlin, did a parallel research on that line. Basically, throughout my entire career I only played the Hungarian against the Russian System. Some of ideas I have tried were deviating from existing theory - see for yourself how good they were.

More videos

Download PGN