g4 Vs The Slav

[Joey Stewart]

Hello peeps.

I had a student ask me about a line involving playing g4 against the slav - I never play (nor intend to play) d4 as white so am totally unfamiliar with the positions.

Does anybody know about this idea and what the rough move order is to reach the position?

[John Upham]

I suspect this is a reference to the Shabalov - Shirov gambit.

This is played from the white side of a Semi-Slav (rather than Slav) Defence.

Try https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=shabalov+gambit

[Roger de Coverly]

Does anybody know about this idea and what the rough move order is to reach the position?

This appears to be the line

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 e6 5. e3 Nbd7 6. Qc2 Bd6 7. g4

The usual move order transpositions involving QGD and the "triangle" are naturally possible.

There's over two thousand games to choose from, including numerous at the top level.

It dates from 1992 with Shirov (who else) being amongst the first or perhaps the first to adopt it.

It pops up from time to time in British events, mostly the 4NCL.

[Joey Stewart]

Yeah, that looks like the one, cheers roge, I should be able to research it from there.

[Niall Doran]

I hope I'm not being out of line here Joey, but if you're teaching students, shouldn't you play different openings with white? That way, you'll have an idea of typical plans, strengths, weaknesses of different lines. I mean it's one thing looking them up in books and teaching based on that, but you won't have a 'feel' for the different positions if you don't play them.

I also ask the question out of personal interest. With white I've only ever played e4 (bar a very brief flirtation with 1. Nf3), but as I will probably be teaching kids sometime in the next couple of years (the current guy in the club is getting on a bit), I've often wondered myself whether I shouldn't broaden my repertoire in order to know what I'm talking about, and who knows, maybe even improve my own play.

[Joey Stewart]

I have a bit of an idea what to do against d4 openings, I get them played against me about half of all the games I have had. It gives me a chance to broaden my own horizons to see some of these offbeat ideas and usually we spend time analysing the resulting positions, trying to decide what plans to each side is likely to want to persue and then make up a concrete move order to try and enact these ideas.
I don't know about everyone else but it seems to work OK for me and I would rather my students be thinking and trying to understand the positions then learning cheap theoretical tricks which leave them playing the position blind if the opponent deviates from the line they learned.

[James Coleman]

Even as regular 1.d4 player I couldn't have said anything about that line beyond I knew which one you were talking about and I knew Kasparov used to play it. There's only so much you can incorporate into a repertoire! I couldn't give anyone a meaningful lesson on it without researching it from scratch. My students never ask me anything that specific!