Yeah, I saw a few issues with lines Ibrust was showing as well.
Its kind of odd, but at same time Ibrust might have plan their I’m not considering.
post an example of a problem and we can look into it further, I mostly just scanned through these lines... but general impressions were black needs to play pretty precisely, especially as you go deeper, to avoid big swings in favor of white... often times there's just 1 decent move. And the position is different enough based on a few odd moves to where I suspect that won't happen. English Attack I do think is the best objective try but black is actually scoring well there by comparison, probably because it's just so theoretical. And black is reaching the Najdorf like 35% of their games probably. So I really don't want to just play your typical English Attack.
I guess my main question is does white center collapse?
Normally, they play Bg2 + Ne2 to help strengthen center e4 pawn.
It looks like your planning on not playing either which makes me wonder if the e4 pawn is going to become extremely shakey.
Black can't push d5 quickly. Long term what happens depends on how white plays it, there are different ways. Like Qf3 / O-O-O supports d5. Similarly g4 > Bg2 can support d5. On the other hand, an early f4 can explode the center. You can play it in a variety of ways, I'll need to finish off the lines before I go into too many specifics. But in the lines where black does get d5 the positions are very sharp and tactical. Kramnik speaks well of Nb3 here so it can't be that bad... Kramnik is usually very cynical. He describes it as tactical in contrast with Ne2 that leads to a more positional game. But in general you usually can transpose into an English attack h3 sideline... if you ask leela these lines are objectively on par with the mainline english in their eval. The eval improves as you go deeper.
Anyway, result wise if you look at one of the points in the english where h3 is played... compare h3 to the mainline f3 here. Mainline f3 black and white are scoring dead even. With h3... white is doing alot better... I'd say this is just because f3 is very played out at this point. You can see the same thing in the italian / ruy lopez these days -
Now after Qf3 on the next move here's how that's performing... Qf3 combined with h3 changes the position and the patterns which arise quite alot... this is how an open sicilian ought to look for white -
In my case I'm reaching this from h3 and delaying Be3 where possible, which adds another layer of misdirection to it.
There's one sideline I'll have to play that won't be an english attack sideline... but it looks pretty good, very unusual patterns for a Najdorf.
I'm actually more concerned about finding something novel and interesting against the dragon at this point. Yugoslav... as much as black players lament it I'm not seeing alot of good ways for getting out of theory until much later. But I may just have to switch to playing the dragon for a while in order to figure it out...
Yeah, I saw a few issues with lines Ibrust was showing as well.
Its kind of odd, but at same time Ibrust might have plan their Iām not considering.
post an example of a problem and we can look into it further, I mostly just scanned through these lines... but general impressions were black needs to play pretty precisely, especially as you go deeper, to avoid big swings in favor of white... often times there's just 1 decent move. And the position is different enough based on a few odd moves to where I suspect that won't happen. English Attack I do think is the best objective try but black is actually scoring well there by comparison, probably because it's just so theoretical. And black is reaching the Najdorf like 35% of their games probably. So I really don't want to just play your typical English Attack.
I guess my main question is does white center collapse?
Normally, they play Bg2 + Ne2 to help strengthen center e4 pawn.
It looks like your planning on not playing either which makes me wonder if the e4 pawn is going to become extremely shakey.