5

Do any books or other resources discuss this variation for Black? Does it have a name?

The general idea is to go 4...h6, then ...d6 and ...g5 in some order, depending on what White does.

S. Mamedyarov plays this line a lot.

Sample line:

 [FEN ""]
    1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 h6 5. c3 d6 6. O-O g5
B.Swan
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1 Answers1

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FM Andrey Terekhov's Two Knights Defense repertoire on Chessable uses this variation against 4.d3.

That repertoire deserves to be more widely known: it's one of the best on Chessable, the author updates it frequently, and it's free!

In the introductory text of 4.d3 h6 he notes:

In the beginning, this line has been mostly used as a surprise weapon, but in the past two years it developed its own body of theory. GM Alexey Kuzmin published a couple of articles summarizing the latest developments in this line in "ChessBase Magazine" (in 2018) and in Russian "64" (2019) .

So those are sources too.

And according to a ChessPub discussion, there are also two analyzed games in this line in Alexander Ipatov: Unconventional Approaches to Modern Chess Volume 1; Thinkers Publishing 2019, although I don't see it in that book's list of contents.

RemcoGerlich
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  • Exactly what I was looking for! If I understand correctly the games analysed in Ipatov's book discuss a setup with ...h6 and ...g6, not ...g5, which seems like a different idea. – B.Swan May 17 '21 at 11:35
  • That comment mentions 6...g5, and the games MVL - Mamedyarov 2018 and Fossan - Hammer 2018. But I don't have the book, can't check. I think ...g6 is the older idea and ...g5 is the new one that is being played only since a few years. – RemcoGerlich May 17 '21 at 11:39