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Welcome to chessopenings.com. Today we're going to look at a popular
opening variation, known as the Catalan opening. In the Catalan, White
sidesteps a number of aggressive ideas by Black and sets up a quiet game
where he can play for an edge with little risk. To get to the Catalan
opening, White normally begins with the moves, pawn to d4, knight f6, pawn
to c4, e6, g3, and after the move d5 we have, in fact, reached the Catalan
position after knight f3. Let's take a look.
The Catalan is basically a queen's gambit declined where White chooses to
place his bishop on the long diagonal via the g2 location. It's the
attractive placement of this bishop that characterizes the Catalan and
constantly frustrates Black. It gives White serious pressure along the
queen side. The idea is that, once Black's D pawn eventually moves, usually
by capturing on c4, the light squared bishop will be unleashed and will
exert tremendous pressure on the queen side. There are many known setups
against the Catalan for Black. Many of them are quite decent, but in fact
we are actually going to begin our examination with the move, pawn takes
pawn on c4. By capturing quickly, Black hurries to exploit the fact that
the light squared bishop will not be able to recapture the pawn from its
destined square on g2. Instead, White will have to either capture the pawn
with the queen after, say, queen a4 takes d4, or he'll have to capture
with a knight after, perhaps, knight b2D and take c4. Both of these
maneuvers take a little extra time on White's part. Black hopes to use
this time to organize his equalizing pawn break of pawn to c5 or to try to
hold onto this extra pawn that he's gained on the queen side.
A very interesting point in this position is that the move, queen to a4
check, is actually not very good for White in this position. This is
because instead of playing the standard reply bishop d7 in this case, Black
has a better move which is knight B to d7 which helps to support the
thematic pawn to c5 break. For example, after the move, queen takes c4,
Black normally now plays a6 preparing the move, b5, and preparing to bring
the bishop to b7. Now White plays bishop g2, b5, queen c2, bishop b7. Now
White is typically castled in this position. But after c5, this position
is actually not very good for White at all. Black has achieved, more or
less, everything that he is looking for. He has achieved the equalizing
break c5, and he's gotten lovely placement for his pieces on the queen
side. Also, if you pay attention to the queen, the queen has moved to a4
and to c4 and to c2 occupying 3 of White's tempi. And the queen will also
probably be exposed along the C file and have to move a fourth time. This
is clearly not what White wants in the Catalan opening.
Backing up a bit, I also want to mention that queen c6 was possible at this
moment that Black played pawn to b5. However, Black would simply play rook
b8 planning to eject the queen. There are some interesting ideas here for
White, but he's got to act pretty fast since that queen is getting ready to
get usurped. So White plays the move, bishop to f4, threatening queen
takes c7. Here, too, Black has a good game if he knows what to do. The
right recipe here is to play knight to d5. If Black plays well, he will
eventually be able to push the queen out of her location and play c5
despite White's efforts to block things up on the aggressive queen post.
If queen a4 check is not a great option for White, what he normally does
here is he simply continues with the standard development bishop to g2. At
this point Black does have several options, but by and large he is settled
on just three general options here.
The most direct of these options is to play the immediate move, pawn to c5.
With this move Black is going straight ahead and trying to equalize the
game as quickly as possible by trying to trade this flank pawn for a
central pawn. If he can achieve this exchange under reasonable conditions,
he should have no problems with equality. However, there is a downside to
Black's strategy which is that he's spending too much time moving pawns in
the opening. So far he's only managed to move one piece and it's on this
fact that White will base his subsequent play. In fact, the suggested move
here is simply to castle king side.
To demonstrate some of the venom contained in the Catalan position, let's
imagine that the rules of chess suddenly changed and White was given an
opportunity to move again. In this case, he would gladly take the pawn on
c5 now that he does have defense for his queen and doesn't have to lose
castling rights. After queen takes d1, rook takes d1, and bishop takes on
c5, White would then continue with knight e5. Remember that at the moment
White is still down a pawn, but he is very close to recovering this pawn.
In this position I think you can also see the basis for White's advantage,
and it really does come down to this light squared bishop, this Catalan
bishop, which is exerting pressure down the long diagonal. It's because of
this fact that Black has real problems completing his development. He
cannot really move the light squared bishop. But at the same time it's
very difficult to find the appropriate square for the knight on b8 since
its natural square on c6 is also missing. At the same time, White should
have no problem recovering the pawn. He should either be able to capture
with this knight or he also has the option of taking on c4 via knight B to
d2.
In this position, Black's most sensible reaction is to play knight c6.
This allows him to continue his development and force some clarification of
the central situation. White has a couple of popular options, but we're
going to focus on the most aggressive of these which is the move knight to
e5, utilizing the Catalan bishop and putting real pressure down the long
diagonal. Right away this sets a couple of traps for Black to fall into.
If Black takes the pawn on d4 with his knight he immediately loses material
after the sequence pawn to e3, knight c6, bishop takes c6 check, pawn takes
bishop, and now queen takes queen followed by knight takes f7 winning the
rook on d8. This is very clearly not what Black would like to see in this
position.
On the other hand, if Black takes the knight on e5, he continues to
experience some problems. Since after pawn takes knight and knight d5,
White definitely has a space advantage due to the e5 pawn and he has no
real problems recovering the pawn using knight e3. Sooner or later he'll
play e4 and this is a good position for White. Also, it doesn't help Black
to exchange queens on d1 since after rook takes queen and knight to d7, the
simple move f4 followed by knight to a3 or knight d2 picking up the pawn on
c4 will be good enough. Black can try rook b8 hoping to play b5, but White
simply plays the move, pawn to a4. And now after a6 there are various
reactions which allow White to regain his pawn on c4 with an advantage.
It turns out that Black only has one good move in this position and that
move is bishop to d7. Once again, White continues at his own leisure with
the move knight to a3 getting ready to recover this pawn on c4. In fact,
this position still allows Black to go up a pawn after the natural moves,
pawn takes pawn on d4, knight A takes a4, and bishop c5. Theory says that
White is a little better here despite the fact that White is down a pawn.
As we predicted from the beginning of this discussion, White's bishop on g2
is putting real uncomfortable pressure on the queen side. This is probably
best exploited by continuing with the move, queen b3, starting to weaken
this b7 point and starting to really get at these light squares. Notice
how paralyzed this pawn is. If it were to advance, the c6 knight would be
lost. Trading knights doesn't help either since the a8 rook is also under
attack. Once again, notice the rule of this g2 bishop, the Catalan bishop.
The mechanical reply rook B would actually lead to an embarrassing
situation after the move, bishop f4, when Black will certainly lose
material since this rook will not be able to maintain its post on b8.
Queen c8 is a possibility, but this is not fared too well either. White
has a few options. Just to show one, one idea is bishop f4, castling king
side. Then, for example, rook A to c1, and the queen's placement is
vulnerable. This kind of position offers White more than enough
compensation for his pawn. After the move, queen b3, what should Black do?
The actual recommendation here is for Black to play castling king side
just allowing that b7 pawn to fall. We won't discuss this position in too
much detail after queen takes b7 since this leads to quite a tactical
variation that you'd want to study carefully. I hope we're seeing here
just how strongly White's play on the queen side can unfold.
We definitely haven't come anywhere near exhausting the potential after the
move, pawn to c5. However, I now want to switch to looking at the move,
pawn to a6, which has an entirely different concept. The point here is to
defend the pawn on c4 and try to hold onto that pawn for dear life, usually
by playing the move, pawn to b5. Once again White's best reaction, as we
become accustomed to in the Catalan, is simply to continue his development
with the move castling king side. You might want to ask, "Why doesn't White
play the move, pawn to a4?" In fact, this looks like a good idea, but this
allows Black to use the very strong reply knight to c6. The idea with this
move, knight to c6, is to put pressure on the d4 point so that White has no
problem attacking that pawn on c4. If White were to play something like
knight d2 or queen to c2, in both cases the move knight takes d4 would
cause him serious problems. On the other hand, if he simply plays castling
king side, now Black will simply play rook b8, preparing pawn to b5, and
the move a5 is no use because of bishop b4 giving Black a good gain.
So backing up to the position after pawn to a6, White should simply play
the move castling king side. White accurately sees that if Black plays b5
too quickly, his position is vulnerable to a very quick knight to e5. So
after castles, Black's idea is not to play b5 just yet, but once again he
is still relying on this move, knight to c6. This move may look very
strange, but we just saw that it's part of a deep plan to prepare pawn to
b5, and it does make it difficult for White to recover this pawn on c4. As
we saw earlier, the knight on c6 prevents White from easily attacking the C
pawn with the moves knight b d2 or queen to c2. At the same time, Black is
once again ready to play this move, rook b8 and b5. This is one of the
main ideas in this position. An example of this would occur after the
standard reply knight c3. In fact, e3 is a better move here, but I do want
to show what happens after knight to c3 when Black would definitely play
rook b8. Even though White is able to play, for example, pawn to e4 and
b5, theory does say that White has real compensation for the pawn since its
development is going very smoothly and he has a definite advantage in
central space. It's these kinds of positions which are very interesting to
study as either side and give both sides excellent chances if they're
willing to do a little homework.
That's all for today. By exploring the few variations in the Catalan,
we've gotten some real insight into some of the key strategic ideas. We've
seen that the Catalan bishop is a real monster in these positions and puts
real pressure on Black. Black can gain counter chances if he's willing to
play for an immediate c5 or try to hold onto the extra pawn. That's all for
today. We'll see you soon.