St. George's Defense is OK!

Indeed I have read them both. I have had both but now I only retain the last volume "The New St. George". I can actually do you one better I also have "The Polish Defense" by Thomas Kapitaniak which has you should know is a close relative of the St.George.

The reason I asked if any of the posters have read either volumes of the St.George (or Baker's Defence) is there are people passing judging on 1...a6 (or as you so rightly point out 1...e6 & 2...a6) based soley on dogmatic principles without actually knowing what the long term point of 1...a6 is as Basman and others have played it.

To say that 1...a6 is with out a point is simply wrong. Basman on page 1 of the above mentioned book points that a6 and b5 effect the centre squares by safeguarding the position of a Black Knight arriving at d5 by restraining the advance c4 by White. Basman then goes further with this logic by suggesting that under his prefered move order that after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 a6 that 3.c4! is a logical progression, after all Black wants d5. Basman then suggest the sacrifice 3...b5 after which positions simular to Owen's Defence occur should White accept the sac. I am not going into lines ad infinitum, buy the book or books or if you are really cheap I have seen pdf's on line.

One final thing, the often repeated Miles v Karpov game.

 Hadron.

ok, it´s playable, but   white should play  3. c3!!

what is the idea behind the move a6?  I´ts play b5 of course.  

 If you hold a set up b2-c3-d4-e4   and then you play  a4! i think you are  ok with white pieces ,  this is very classic in modern defense when the white player plays  Nc3 and Black plays a6!.  So here is the same , but white didn´t play yet the move Nc3.   The plan  a6-b5 is little effective if the white plays this set-up . 

Well, maybe yes maybe no. The issue as I see it with your analysis is it possibly presupposes a rigid move order.

You are right though, to a degree, that the point of a6 is to play b5 ( as I mentioned earlier to restrain the pawn advance c2-c4) but given you have rather obviously set out the intention of your plan by playing 3.c3!? (and with respect to you giving such a simple move 2 excalamation marks is somewhat excessive) that 3...Bb7 is not altogether precise and maybe 3...e6 is needed first to contest the queenside dark squares. Of course then 4.Nd2 makes less sense. If memory serves Basman won a game against this very formation but from a different move order (1.e4 a6 2.d4 e6 3.c3 b5)

Then again if you use that move order and go down your suggested try of 3.c3, there are other tries such as 1.e4 a6 2.d4 e6 3.c3 d5 is one and 1.e4 a6 2.d4 e6 3.c3 c5

I am not saying you are wrong or right but pointing out that if one is going to try and play Basmany chess, you can not be inflexible with your ideas or as you point out, one could end up being fornicated at great rate of knots.

After 5. a4 instead of c5, Black can play 5. ... bxa4 then play 6. ... c5. Black won't be a pawn down and can continue with his development.

I've read Basman's book on the opening and played it a couple of times, once against d4 and once against e4.

I won both but the game I played against e4 was fantastic. I'm generally a 1470 to 1530 rated player and my opponent was 1649, he had a large centre but I found the st George's countered it easily with the powerful bishop on b7 that proved difficult to exchange. In a simplified ending I ended up a pawn up with the bishop against knight in both my games which was simply dominating. It happened in the Miles-Karpov game and is winning for black. If you can play the opening and simplify down to a bishop against knight ending you should have a won/equal position. Unless your opponent is an attacking legend or you forget how the pieces move I think it is difficult to lose when you deploy this opening against e4. It works against d4 but makes for a longer struggle in which White could prevent black from reaching the desired ending, and, succeeding in doing so, the game will end in a draw. Thanks :)

There is one reason to play a6 at all as black. In the St. George Defense, white MUST attack. Otherwise his advantage will disappear.

I have started playing a6 as black and I have won nine games in a row.  Against players ranked in the 800's mind you.  But i have found my opponents to be really thrown off.  I love doing 2...h6 as well to reign in whites bishops followed by e6 and d6 to open space for my own bishops.  Also with the main line of pushing b5 and fianchettoing the bishop, I have found that later in the game that bishop becomes a monster.  Even more, I have had a few tremendous games bouncing my knights around the board due to white being unsure of how to position their pawns.  I feel like I have taken advantage of white being unprepared by 1...a6 so much so that I argue that it is a strong opening for lower to intermediate players. 

I played the St. George (have both editions of Basman's book) for more than 15 years against both 1.e4 and 1.d4. It's not particularly good, but there's really only one variation that is absolutely critical for Black, namely when White plays a very quick c4 (on move 3 or 4) - as pointed out by Basman. This results in a massively superior structure, space advantage, and active piece play for White. Black is forced to either capture on c4, play ...c6 or try sacrificing a pawn for some play. In all my years, I encountered that set-up only once, and it was a against a d4 player (e4 players are typically reluctant to commit to an early c4).

There are a couple of dream variations for Black (typically When white just lazily sets up with e4, d4, Nf3, Nc3, Bd3 and Bd2/e3/f4/g5 - Black's pressure on e4 and along the h1-a8 diagonal becomes tremendous). All other White setups are more or less OK for Black, I'm not saying great because that would be to lie, but they're perfectly playable. And you have to be prepared to leave the king the centre in virtually every game.

Anytime people play moves that don't challenge the center in the opening, it makes me happy. I may not have the skill to take advantage of it all the time, but it usually gives me time to develop, perhaps castle on the opposite side, and launch a combination Piece & Pawn Storm attack.

its better than its reputation but its not great. The positions i have analyzed always feel like black would be fine if he had just one more tempo, but if white play's accurately, can leave black borderline much worse (evals hover around 0.6 which is somewhere between controversial to just plain worse).

One of the main issues is that black is forced to play a6 for b5 but often, white will play a move that will force b5-b4 anyways! compare this to the Sokolsky  (1.b4) lines where white snatches the queenside space without having to play a3 (or if he does play a3, he would often take after c5 playing it like a queen's gambit like formation, something black cant afford to do due to time without being worse)

it likely woudnt hurt as a surprise weapon, especially in blitz, and if you are below 2000, by all means play it to your hearts content, but if you are serious and like these kinds of position , play 1.e4 b6 and 1.b4 e5 2.a3 which is much more sound with the extra tempo.

i play the St George, and i kind of wish the a6 e6 line got attention. i personally dislike the a6 b5 bb7 line and would kindly discourage it to a st george player. while it's not awful, black will be much happier playing moves like e6 d5 c5 Bd7  Nc6 etc. it sets up for a massive flank storm and while it's still imperfect it's much much better than a rushed b5

Cool

The Best Black can hope for is a transposition out of it into a opening where ...a6 would be played anyway, not exactly the theoretically best opening

According to stockfish at depth 22, its the 5th best defense against 1. e4. Its better than most defenses, like scandinavian or modern 

If it is good enough to defeat a reigning world champion in a classical game then it is OK.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068157 

nice

very 2 ok

I just finished a game against this and won but had no idea what my opponent was going to do or what to expect. So I just played chess we are both around 900. I just focused on developing my pieces on good squares and tried not to make a blunder. One thing that stood out was how open his side became and while he was able to put pressure on me with his pawns his pieces were not well organized and he resigned after a failed attack.

There's one line that gives it serious problems... leela says it's about +0.36. But it's a very sharp continuation, I think the odds are very low of the opponent knowing it at alot of depth. Otherwise the eval is generally like +0.2 or so, maybe a little more, unless white makes a more significant error... which you can probably count on. But what I find funny about this concern over the eval is the yugoslav attack against the dragon scores about the same if you follow the sharp engine line... but people still play the dragon all the time, meanwhile this is just never played.

I think it's viable if you want to play this way. I don't find it too inspiring myself, don't really see the threats that black is creating other than just.... not dying, and creating confusion I suppose. But I don't think it's bad. It beat Karpov after all.

+1 totally agree with the playing c3. Allows pushing the pawn to e5 splinting the board