English Chess Forum

Reti opening for White

Hi. Does anyone play this system or have expeirence playing it? I quite like the appeal of this opening from a king safety point of view. Moves such as g3, Bg2, Nf3, 0-0 (not playing e4) The king looks ultra safe and I’ve recently been having trouble with the king safety. It was one of the 1st stratageys I learned as a kid to “build a house” for the king in the way mentioned above.

Kevin O'Rourke wrote: Does anyone play this system or have experience playing it?

I'd suggest it works best if you back it up with a broad range of openings and systems that you can transpose into. But you are quite correct, if you play Nf3, g3, Bg2, O-O your king is usually safe. One system to watch out for is if Black goes .. d5, .. Nc6, .. e5 . Your problem is that you are now defending a Pirc which has some vicious lines where the defender can be blown away with ideas from Black such as Be6/g4, Qd7 , O-O-O and h5

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Kevin O'Rourke wrote: Does anyone play this system or have experience playing it?

I'd suggest it works best if you back it up with a broad range of openings and systems that you can transpose into

I’ve been playing (mostly) 1 Nf3 for a while now and I think Roger is quite correct here.

I never go 1 Nf3 2 g3 3 Bg2. I started off with 1 Nf3 d5 2 c4 and held my d-pawn back until well into the middlegame.

These days I’m much more likely to play an early d2-d4 after 1 Nf3, transposing into queen’s pawn systems having avoided certain variations. I’ll quite often include a later g2-g3 and Bf1-g2 but not always.

I’ve never played 1 Nf3 as a lead into the King’s Indian Attack in a serious game but obviously that’s entirely respectable too.

Jonathan Bryant wrote: I I started off with 1 Nf3 d5 2 c4 and held my d-pawn back until well into the middlegame.

The system for Black with 2. c4 d4, followed up with .. f6 and .. e5 gives space. The Jones-Adams game from the 2016 British is an example.

Jonathan Bryant wrote: These days I’m much more likely to play an early d2-d4 after 1 Nf3, transposing into queen’s pawn systems having avoided certain variations.

That's often the Kramnik method.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Jonathan Bryant wrote: I I started off with 1 Nf3 d5 2 c4 and held my d-pawn back until well into the middlegame.

The system for Black with 2. c4 d4, followed up with .. f6 and .. e5 gives space. The Jones-Adams game from the 2016 British is an example.

2 ... d4 is definitely the critical test. I got it about 1 game in 5. The only time my opponent played the ... f6 and ... e5 set-up was about 10 years ago. Led to a rather nice win for me. Obviously Black doesn’t have to let me be so accommodating.

You have to like Benoni-type positions if you’re going to play this sort of thing.

[Event "Croydon League"] [Date "2007.12.04"] [White "JMGB"] [Black "Brant, Jack"] [Result "1-0"] [BlackElo "1860"] [ECO "A09"] 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.g3 f6 4.Bg2 e5 5.d3 Be6 6.O-O Nc6 7.e3 Bc5 8.exd4 exd4 9.Re1 Kf7 10.Nbd2 Qd7 11.Ne4 b6 12.Neg5+ fxg5 13.Nxg5+ Kf6 14.Rxe6+ Qxe6 15.Nxe6 1-0

Had a silly person online blindly play e5 into me so that was a nice gift.

Feels weird not moving my e pawn.
Thanks for the advice