Catalan Games of Interest

I am a subscriber to Chess Today and 2 recent issues had games of interest to anyone using the Catalan repertoire. I put the 2 PDFs on a website which you can get to via the following links:

http://www.jmcaree.com/CT-3261.pdf
http://www.jmcaree.com/CT-3279.pdf

They are both annotated by Alex Baburin. I'm sure he won't mind me sharing these with you

I went through game 1, here is the pgn if you want to replay it.
I did not explore all the alternate lines, only some of them.

http://cjoint.com/?led3BsZAbe

My comment :

All the game is based on the c4 pawn, which then become the powerfull c4 -> d5 -> d6 pawn, ok, this is good, but i can tell you that in the big majority of my games, this pawn simply disapear in the opening after dxc4 turning out to be a QGA variant.

So i guess i won't play this very often, just my opinion...

Thanks for posting these, I look forward to going over them!

The first game is a good example (IMHO) of a Closed Catalan with 6...c6. Not only that, Alex shows some of the play when Black opts for 6...b6, athough his treatment is slightly different to the ICS line. The second game is an Open Catalan (by transposition). The main interest here (for me), is that the player with the White pieces is Boris Avrukh, whose well respected "Grandmaster Repertoire: 1d4..." has the Catalan as its cornerstone. Both games are well annotated by Alexander Baburin - a Russian Grandmaster who moved to Ireland in the 90s. (So far he is Ireland's only grandmaster, but hopefully IM Sam Collins (trained by Alex) might make the grade soon.) When you play 1.d4 you have to be ready for QGA, Dutch, Benoni, Benko, KID etc. as well as the Catalan. And when you do get the Catalan, you have to be prepared for both Open and Closed. There are no shortcuts. This doesn't mean that you have to KNOW every line, but you should know the main lines and most importantly the ideas. For instance, in the first game after 10.Nc3 Alex says: "With the black bishop on a6 the b1-knight should go to d2, while when the bishop is on b7, then c3 is a better square...". He then shows what happens if Black subsequently plays ...Ba6.

jmca wrote:The first game is a good example (IMHO) of a Closed Catalan with 6...c6. Not only that, Alex shows some of the play when Black opts for 6...b6, athough his treatment is slightly different to the ICS line. The second game is an Open Catalan (by transposition). The main interest here (for me), is that the player with the White pieces is Boris Avrukh, whose well respected "Grandmaster Repertoire: 1d4..." has the Catalan as its cornerstone. Both games are well annotated by Alexander Baburin - a Russian Grandmaster who moved to Ireland in the 90s. (So far he is Ireland's only grandmaster, but hopefully IM Sam Collins (trained by Alex) might make the grade soon.) When you play 1.d4 you have to be ready for QGA, Dutch, Benoni, Benko, KID etc. as well as the Catalan. And when you do get the Catalan, you have to be prepared for both Open and Closed. There are no shortcuts. This doesn't mean that you have to KNOW every line, but you should know the main lines and most importantly the ideas. For instance, in the first game after 10.Nc3 Alex says: "With the black bishop on a6 the b1-knight should go to d2, while when the bishop is on b7, then c3 is a better square...". He then shows what happens if Black subsequently plays ...Ba6.

I think there are some advantages and disadvantages to playing Catalan setup. You don't have to worry about NID/QID and you can play fianchetto setup against KID. Also Catalan setup will work against Dutch. But one thing that is a problem is the Slav/Semi-Slav. Even in Avrukh book he is advocating some other lines (non-Catalan) setup against them.

Chessbase has an article on their site this week about the Catalan Bishop too, along with 6 annotated games.

It must be the opening of the month or something.