The Accelerated Panov Variation | Tricky Lines in the Caro-Kann Defense | IM Alex Astaneh

hey guys it's alex here and in this video i'm going to be talking about the so-called accelerated panoff this variation starts after it moves e4 c6 when here white plays the move pawn to c4 in order to understand why it's called the accelerated pan off it helps to know which one the regular panel for the pan off but vinik actually is and this is after the move d4 d5 pawn takes d5 pawn takes d5 and now pawn to c4 this is the regular panel for the panel of botvinnik attack and it can be arrived at via the move order of the accelerated pan off so it's very useful to be aware of this as well as the black player after e4 c6 white can go c4 and after d5 white can capture with the e pawn c takes d5 and now go into the so-called panoplanvinic attack so you want to be prepared against both the regular panoff which can arrive via this order and um the accelerated pan off which involves white capturing twice on d5 either starting with the c pawn or starting with the e pawn it won't affect us because we're going to be playing the same thing against both lines and so you must have knowledge of both of these the second one will be covered in the uh panofbotvinic video in a separate video but for now let's deal with this one well the first thing to say about this position is that black should not hurry to take the pawn because if black hurries takes with the queen now after the move knight to c3 black is forced to waste more time with the queen and let's say that he goes back white would play d4 and he gets a very good version of what's known as isolated queen's pawn iqp position so this is not really the recommended way to play so instead what we're going to be recommending is that we bring out our knight to f6 and we hit the pawn on d5 now if white let's say develops normally with a move like knight f3 we will take back the pawn and we still have an isolated queen's pawn position but it's a much better version for us the thing to remember about isolated queen's pawn positions or iqp for short the thing to remember about such positions is that they're inherently neutral sometimes you can have a good version of an iqp meaning that the side with the iqp in this case white would be very happy and other times you can have a bad version of the iqp so whenever we're playing against it we want to make sure that we don't give our opponent too good of a version of an iqp so let's go back to the critical starting position and here there are three major options that white has our main line is going to be knight to c3 but before this we want to examine two very tricky moves one thing to keep in mind about both the accelerated pan off and the panon but vinnick is that they're very sharp lines and if we don't know our theory we can very very quickly find ourselves in a lost position so the first move to consider is this tricky check queen a4 the idea that white has is that if bishop to d7 white will drop the queen back to b3 and now the queen will be cut off from the attack on the pawn on d5 and the bishop will no longer be defending the pawn on b7 so actually this move hurts black rather than helps him we cannot block with the queen because after bishop b5 we would be in serious trouble so therefore our move is knight b to d7 now white plays knight c3 and we can see that blocking the queen's vision over the d5 point means we can no longer play knight takes d5 it's also not easy to kick the queen away because we cannot play knight b6 and ideas with a6 and b5 we have to be very careful of because white could actually take this pawn since we cannot take the bishop back because the rook is hanging so what should black do he's down the pawn and for those of you like me who don't like the gambit pawns without a lot of certainty you might be feeling a little bit panicky already but not to worry because white has wasted time with moves like queen a4 and his pawn is still quite vulnerable so we simply develop our pieces and continue upon down for now after this move white's main line is knight f3 he could also play bishop c4 but this will likely transpose back to our main to our main coverage so we won't deal with this knight f3 and here after knight f3 we play bishop to g7 and well the move that makes sense to now transpose is this move bishop to c4 uh one tricky option that white has is to drag the queen back to b3 and here i just want to show you one idea that um that black has in these positions after queen b3 castle bishop to c4 notice that the white queen was happy to drop back because this um let's say that the purpose of giving the check was to drag the knight to d7 once that mission was accomplished the queen now goes back to b3 in order to try and hang on to that extra pawn this is a recurring theme of people who play the accelerated pan off they will try to hang on to this pawn for dear life and you need to know how to react depending on how they play here the tricky idea for black is to put the knight on c5 taking advantage of the queen being on b3 if the queen drops to c2 we could play bishop f5 and develop our pieces very quickly and if instead white goes queen a3 which is the usual choice now we play knight to e4 and after castle we put our knight on d6 this seems really quite uh a lot to know um but basically the big thing to remember is that in this position if white goes for that early queen b3 and bishop c4 if he sets his pieces up like this you can go knight c5 to e4 to d6 this is a funky knight maneuver even if you don't remember the exact move order i wouldn't worry too much about this it's just that very often you'll find either first bishop c4 first queen b3 you'll find that white sets himself up in this way and you want to know this possible knight maneuver the knight behind the pawn is very very well placed it now clears the path for the bishop it attacks this bishop and it even supports in the future a potential pawn advance on the queen side so black is not at all stressed by still being down the pawn because the pawn is blocked and it's a double pawn so let's go back a few moves so in this position instead white can begin with the move bishop to c4 rather than move the queen back immediately in this case we would castle and now white plays the move d3 now this kills off these knight maneuvers that we just spoke about so black needs to have some other idea well the idea for black here that i recommend is to move pawn to a6 now remember earlier on in the video i showed how the move b5 is not a threat because white could take this pawn and black cannot capture back since the rook on a8 is hanging however right now it has actually once again become a thread why is this well let's say that we castle now we play b5 this is a very important idea to know after white grabs the pawn we can play an intermezzo a so-called in-between move we can play knight to b6 here we not only hit the queen but we also defend the rook so when the queen moves we can actually capture the bishop since now the same tactical idea no longer works for white so this is very important uh motif to know if we can say that there are a few themes or thematic ideas and maneuvers and motifs one of them is this knight funky knight maneuver here there's another well-known idea to keep in mind that b5 is a threat now before when the king was here it was no longer a threat because we didn't have the inter mezzo since the night was pinned now that we're castled we are absolutely threatening that very good to know because many players many white players will fall for this so the correct move for white is to sidestep with the queen of course cannot go to b3 because one of the drawbacks of d3 is that now b5 would trap the bishop so the white player goes to a3 and the point is that now b5 could be captured because there is no internet so the queen on a3 here is safe therefore what should black do well black simply plays pawn to b6 and the idea is that as black we want to put our bishop on b7 and put pressure on d5 and also once our bishop is on b7 the rook on a8 will be defended and we can play the move pawn to b5 soon after that so after v6 white has nothing better than the castle we indeed put our bishop on b7 white can put his rook on the semi-open file and attack our pawn twice but we can simply defend uh with rook to e8 and actually this position is quite complicated but i think that white is doing um rather that black is doing better than white here because he has more active plans he has ideas involving b5 and sometimes putting the knight on b6 to collect this pawn on d5 other times trying to advance his pawns to create problems against the cramped white queen side pieces so there are many ideas and the play is relatively straightforward for black and it's quite difficult to figure out what exactly white can do on the other hand in fact black's results at the tournament level have been much better than whites which speaks quite a bit about the difficulty of this position although objectively speaking it's something around close to equal so hopefully you enjoyed this uh particular analysis of this move queen a4 check let's now go back to the fifth move and let's look at that other option bishop to b5 check okay so the next move to look at before we go on to the main line of knight c3 is the move bishop b5 check now once again we should uh block with the knight that's the thing to remember if queen a4 or bishop b4 b5 were recommending to block with the knight on both occasions now white can develop his knight and once again we cannot immediately capture this pawn unlike in the main line we kick away the bishop and after a6 here white has a choice white can either play to move queen to a4 or white can drop the bishop back the bishop back move does not really worry us too much we can play b5 typical ideas now without the queen here there is no bishop takes b5 threat like we just saw and the b5 move helps to try and recover our pawn on d5 in two ways the first is that it creates the possibility of bishop to b7 and the second is that it also allows this possibility of pawn to b4 kicking the knight away and then we could capture the pawn immediately in fact one line goes d4 b4 knight a4 and simply knight takes d5 when black has equalized personally i really like to play against the accelerated pan off or the pan off but finnick because i'm the kind of player who enjoys playing against isolated queen's pawn position so if you like to play against iqp's then you're going to really enjoy when your opponents play this if not then consider these variations a good opportunity to try to practice playing against the iqp which is a very important structure in chess and again in chess over a chess factor there are some series i myself did one on positional chess where there's quite extensive coverage on the iqp so feel free to check that out if you'd like to really delve down to the nitty-gritty of iqb positions both playing as the side with an isolated queen's pawn and playing against it as in the case right here so let's get back to the position we can see that this move bishop to e2 is really not much of a concern so white here usually plays queen to a4 against this move order we have a move that i really quite like and that is to move rook to b8 simply creating the threat of capturing the bishop it kills off this trick that white has that if you capture the bishop he'll capture your rook so you play rook to b8 here now if the bishop retreats a lot of white's play has been a bit silly to bring the queen out only to get harassed allows black to play with a temp with a few extra tempi compared to other lines so therefore white's idea here is to capture the knight on d7 now you could capture with the queen but here black uh captures with the bishop and now white uh has two possible squares to that he can take his queen either f4 or queen to b3 but in both cases perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind this black is that you have a possibility to gambit or at least offer a pawn which most of the time the black player should not accept so right now black still hasn't recovered his pawn but after let's say to move queen to b3 how we can play as black as we can play pawn to b5 and after a move like pawn d3 i'm just trying to develop black plays pawn e6 and the idea is that here if black uh is able to just sort of be left to his own devices he will play b4 kick the knight away and then take the pawn on the other hand if white captures the pawn then after bishop takes e6 between the fact that white's pawn on d3 is very vulnerable white's queen is under attack black has the bishop pair and white still hasn't completed his development by castling between all of these facts combined black has more than enough compensation for the pawn and this is why usually the white player is not interested in capturing capturing the pawn when it is offered up with e6 and if white doesn't capture the pawn what's eventually going to happen the exact move order is less relevant than the particular idea is that black will win the pawn and then at some point defend his his pawn that he has recovered and with the bishop pair he will be um comfortably equal if not a little bit better in the case of the move queen to f4 here we see once again very similar ideas after queen f4 black will continue with the move pawn to b5 and now once again b4 is a thread and if b4 is played then the pawn on d5 will fall really this whole variation this way of playing doesn't make much sense for white unless he's able to hang on to the pawn in good circumstances but once again after move like a3 to prevent b4 black plays e6 and offers up the pawn once again in the same way as we saw and the problem for white is that his best bet is probably to play knight f3 and after black recovers the pawn to simply play a move like d4 to castle let's say black plays bishop e7 castle and castle the exact moves again may differ a little bit but the idea is that both sides now have an isolated queen's pawn very similar structure black has the bishop pair although this bishop is maybe not so good because of the um the way that the pawns are set up on the light squares so overall uh the balance the material balance is identical the structure is very similar and the bishop pair does not count for so much it's not worse than white's pieces but it's also not certainly not better so overall we would say that this position is very balanced however if black if white does not go for this then white would have to take the pawn so let's put that position on the board if white does not go for that he would have to take the pawn so in this position here d takes e6 and after bishop takes e6 we can look at this position and we can say that it's actually once again a little bit too dangerous for white if white uh plays like this against you then in general i would say i certainly would be happy i would say that you should be quite happy to play down the pawn but it's no big deal because your pieces are going to get into play very very quickly you're going to have a lot of activity on a much more open board which will favor the bishops notice how a few seconds ago we were talking about how this bishop in lines where the pawns are like this the bishop is a little bit uh restricted but in the absence of this pawn we can see that this bishop is very strong as is of course this bishop here on d6 so these positions are at least full compensation for black and they should not be worried about that really covers um all the moves apart from the main line our main line of the day which is to move knight to c3 so let's roll back the position to to move five and let's take a look at that now okay so here in this position white most often plays knight to c3 and after knight to c3 our play for next move is quite simple the pawn can be captured because we haven't been coaxed into putting a knight on d7 so in this case we simply capture on d5 now white develops normally with knight to f3 and now the question is how does black play sometimes you have to be a bit careful if you develop this bishop either to f5 or g4 that white can then start to move at the queen let's say to b3 maneuver on the queen side and put pressure on the knight on d5 as well as the pawn on b7 sometimes black can choose to fortify the knight on d5 and keep his bishop on c8 and but here after the move d4 we're going to be in a standard iqp position and well personally this is not really my cup of tea so i've decided to offer something that's a little bit different that has a little bit less theory but that in my opinion just equalizes very comfortably for black so let's check that a possibility out the move is knight take c3 now there's certainly something to be said for white playing d-takes c3 after which the queen exchange the fact that the white king is now on d1 is really not such a big deal because with the queen's off the board white has a safe shelter and white has improved his structure he can aim to use this majority of three versus two to try and create some problems for black on the other hand black can aim eventually to put a pawn on e5 and have good grip of the center and overall with equal material the chances are about level maybe very slightly favorable for white but it's no big deal and what will decide it is how the middle game and endgame is played so this is nevertheless a very rare option which you will not not encounter very often at all so what we're more concerned about is the move b takes c3 moving upon onto the center and trying to establish a strong foothold in the center with an eventual move d4 now what we're going to play is we're going to anticipate d4 and we're going to play a little bit like a grunfeld we're going to play the move g6 and after d4 we're going to plant our bishop on g7 now white develops in his normal fashion bishop d3 and has these pawns that are a little bit more fragile kind of like hanging pawns but um on the other hand as i say he has better control of the center as black we opt for quick development castle white will castle also and now the move that i really like knight to c6 for now it seems like this bishop is really pointing at a brick wall but we want to knock down that wall with the move pawn to e5 if it were our move and we could play e5 then this gets broken down and this bishop becomes very active imagine d takes e5 knight takes e5 we can see that the structure here is very bad for white and if anything black is better the problem or at least it seems like a problem at first is to move rook to e1 controlling e5 and seemingly taking away this option here most players from the black side have opted to develop their bishop bishop to g4 and in the case of h3 be happy to swap off this piece because even if they play like this or of course even with an e5 push but let's say even playing e6 in this position uh black argues that although he gave white the bishop pair the bishop was on c8 and eliminating it before closing off the center helps black's cause however i prefer a very concrete move a very computer-like move but a move that just equalizes on the spot in my opinion if you want to keep more pieces on the board and more complexity perhaps bishop g4 is the way to go but if you don't mind the draw the move that i recommend is e5 anyway after e5 it's true that white can take the pawn on e5 knight takes e5 and d takes e5 and black is down a pawn but we see that white structure especially here on the queen side is a bit has been shattered there's now this pawn is now an isolated pawn and the pawn on e5 is a little bit vulnerable because it's quite advanced black will continue with the move queen a5 we also see that white's development hasn't been complete on the queen side and if white tries to defend the pawn on c3 the pawn on e5 will fall so white plays bishop to f4 and the final thing to know about this position is that although black can actually capture the pawn on c3 he shouldn't do so because capturing this pawn on c3 would give white a bit of an initiative since black would now be the one that hasn't developed and there will be a lot of open lines for moves like rook c1 with the black queen being an easy target instead black should play the move bishop to e6 leave the weaknesses on the board and we can see a2 is under pressure c3 is under pressure e5 is under pressure and black can move the rooks to the c and the d files and continue to bump up the pressure against the white decision white is actually in my opinion the one that has to play most precise to not find himself worse black will almost certainly recover his pawn very soon and if white is not careful maybe more than one of his pawns will fall so with that we've covered all of the possibilities there's that fifth move three major possibilities the move we just saw is knight c3 that's the main line not too dangerous especially if you know this e5 trick and then the more tricky lines are queen a4 check and bishop b5 check but again if you know the little uh maneuvers like the knight maneuver these ideas have a6 and b5 with an intermezzo and the idea of sacrificing a pawn on e6 in in some of these positions then you realize that actually black has enough resources to not be in trouble and in fact in tournament play black scores greater than 50 so i hope that's also the case for you good luck with this hope you picked up some ideas if you liked the video give it a like and i will see you in the next one

Channel: Chessfactor

Views: 37,118

Keywords: caro-kann defense, caro-kann defence, caro kann, caro kann theory, chess theory caro kann, best opening for black, opening against e4, how to play the caro kann, chess, chess openings, chess opening theory, play the caro-kann, chessfactor, chess opening for black, caro kann defense, chess education, chess tutorial, chess channel, best chess channel, chess learning, best chess openings, caro-kann for beginners, caro-kann accelerated panov, accelerated panov variation

Id: alLPVK4wCiA

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021