Attempt at understanding the open Caro Kann ...Bf5 line

If this title doesn’t get your heart pumping, then I don’t know what will. Perhaps this diagram of this extraordinary position.

So, to follow up on the promises I made myself last post, I decided to do some opening analysis. Out of all the possible options, I probably chose dullest one. I like dull chess, to be fair. It’s a position I sometimes get with the black pieces, and if I ever dare to play e4 in a real game, then I would also like to be able to play it with white. In my blitz games I have managed to convincingly lose the position with either side.

Before I start, lemme remind myself of my own rules and general approach: (1) I will not use any type of fish, at the very least not when writing down stuff. Me haz my own braincell. (2) Using the opening database is fine. Although I should give some reasoning why certain moves are typically played, and why other moves aren’t. (3) I shall try to check some high-level games, to get an idea of how play typically continues. (4) I noticed it’s useful to establish some basic ideas in a position when the opponent just plays without a real plan. Like: ‘what does white do when black just waits?’. First of all, this often explains (I think) certain interactions taking place on the chess board. Many ideas never see the light of day, because both players follow theory especially established to prevent the opponent gaining an edge. Secondly, many players have absolutely no clue what to do most of the time (including myself), and having a plan is really powerful in these cases. (5) In general I hope to build up some positional understanding that’s applicable broader than only the specific given line. Dull positions are perfect for this.

‘Short’ introduction into the Caro Kann.

Finally, time to dive into the chess. We start with 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 the typical Caro Kann setup. There are three main options here for white: (1) take black first, (2) let black take, (3) push forward. Each has completely its own characteristics, which I won’t discuss now. We take the second option by playing 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4. Black to move may decide now how to develop his pieces. A sensible setup would be something like Bf5, Nbd7, Ngf6, e6 and the remaining undeveloped pieces will have plenty options. Should be healthy, right? The issue is however that white has enough power to prevent this, and we can only achieve this setup partially.

I tried to look at other possible ways to develop the black pieces after 3. Nxe4, but there’s really not many sensible other options. It looks like g6-Bg7-Nf6-0-0 is playable, it’s not really impressive though. The g6 pawn blocks a square the light squared B might want to use. The g7-bishop is not really so dangerous. And we will later see that gaining control over the d5 square is quite nice for black (for a queen or knight later, possibly), so playing e6 instead of g6 makes some more sense.

From our candidate moves for our ideal setup above, starting with 4. ...e6 is strange. It blocks the bishop forever from the f5 square, and black gains nothing by starting with this move order.

We can also start with 4. ...Nf6. We simply attack the knight on e4. There is no obvious square to retreat the knight to, and defending the knight is not trivial either. In addition, black is in general never really afraid to exchange on e4, because the b8 knight is always nearby to replace its fallen brother on f6. Therefore 5. Nxf6+ is often played, resulting in a position in which both armies managed to successfully develop an astonishing zero pieces total within the first five moves. Whites opening advantage has resulted in doubled black f-pawns and a 4-to-3 majority on the queenside, but this position in itself is worth an entire analysis.

Although these doubled pawns are acceptable, we can try to do better as black, by playing 4. ...Nd7 first. We won’t get doubled pawns this way, yay. We do make the bishop on c8 unhappy though, booo... There are many ways to continue from here, but the position is all about white trying to strengthen its central position, while black tries to find a solution for the bishop on c8. Good players have found that the paradoxical move 5. Ng5 is strong. This is my interpretation: the knight will be kicked by h6 one day, but before this happens black is more or less forced to play ...e6 because of some tactical problems over the light squares (after Bd3 Qe2 and sometimes Nxf7), blocking the bishop forever, and white achieved a major goal. In practice, black is still fine, but he has to fight some more in the center with c5 and b6 to give the bishop some future.

Finally, the ...Bf5 line.

This leaves us with our main move: 4. ...Bf5. The main line here is 5. Ng3, which is the only move that attempts to undermine blacks ideal setup described above. 5. Nc5 gets kicked away to b3 with 5. ...b6, and the other moves 5. Qf3, 5. Nc3 and even 5. Bd3 or 5. f3 also allow black to go for its setup (and perhaps even better in some cases). Funnily enough, white technically doesn’t threaten to win the B and Nf6 is not directly losing. However, people have told me that giving up a perfectly good bishop for a random knight is usually a bad deal, so we should just behave and put it on g6. Having said that, I personally never really feel B’s are stronger than N’s, and sometimes I feel it’s just a very resilient conspiracy and even Stockfish is part of it.

After the retreat 5. ...Bg6 it’s whites turn to decide where things will be heading. One thing that never ceases to surprise me, is how little distinct options there are. It feels to me as if white would have like 10 candidate moves every time, but in practice only a few actually contribute to some advantage. Checking the database, it seems like the two main options are (1) putting the N on f3 in combination with expanding on the kingside with h4., or (2) putting the N on f4, via either route, to exchange the bishop in the future. Other moves like 6. f4, 6. Bc4, 6. c3 or 6. Be3 are not necessarily bad, they just don’t contribute to anything constructive in particular, and black is allowed to follow its plan without any obstructions. It might feel silly to even name these rarely played moves, but I think it’s important. It’s easy to say why some strong move is good, but it’s often really difficult to precisely know why bad moves are bad. Not of course because we will ever make mistakes, but because our opponents might do so.

Having explored how the ...Bf5 position is reached, and why it is reached, I will finally start analysing it in a next part. (Oh boy doing these things thoroughly is actually much longer than one would think at first, but it’s good practice.) Just some random questions I come up with right now would be: what to do when black reached its preferred setup, for both colors? Can white still get some kind of advantage from here? What about the upcoming h4-h5 push? Where should both players castle? Do any of these questions actually make sense, or am I completely on the wrong track? This, and possibly more, but probably less, hopefully in the next part. See ya.