This is most likely the last post of the week, I am a bit sick and I need to get well for the weekend when I need to go play a weekend tournament. Therefore I am concentrating more on resting than doing my normal routine. The move that started the battle this time, 1.f4, is the 5th most commonly played move that was featured in 44959 games in my reference database and it has a score of 48.6%. More commonly seen moves are 1.e4 (3390699 games, score 53%), 1.d4 (2114962 games, score 54.5%), 1.Nf3 (519789 games, score 55.4%) and 1.c4 (442701 games, score 54.2%). My reply to 1.f4 was the most often played 1...d5 (22313 games, score 48.3%). The move 1...d5 was played by Veselin Topalov against Levon Aronian in the 15th Melody Amber rapid and blindfold tournament on March 19th, 2006, for instance. It was the game that was played blindfolded and Aronian ended up winning that game. It has been played by other top Grand Masters more recently and one example of that is the game between Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik that they played on June 29th, 2017 at Leuven and it was a rapid game. In that game Magnus Carlsen was able to win with the white pieces.
Next my opponent played the natural follow-up move 2.Nf3 (16545 games, score 48.5%), which is also the most often played move in the position. It has been played by very strong players such as Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura and Alexander Morozevich. My reply was the 3rd most popular move 2...c5 (2966 games, score 49%), while more often seen moves are 2...Nf6 (6654 games, score 50%) and 2...g6 (3639 games, score 40.9%). Then my opponent chose to play 3.d3 (100 games, score 50%), which has been played by a Grand Master or two, but not that often. It was the 4th most played move in the position, more often were played 3.e3 (2080 games, score 48.1%), 3.g3 (674 games, score 52.3%) and 3.b3 (265 games, score 50%). The highest rated player that went for the move 3.d3 is Aleksej Aleksandrov with a rating of 2592 at the time of the game.
I then played 3...Nc6 (67 games, score 53.7%), which is the most regularly played move. Kojjootti's 4th move e3 was the first one that no Grand Master has played, at least according to my reference database. It has been seen in the database 10 times and it has a score of 45%. It was actually the third most commonly played move, behind the moves 4.g3 (51 games, score 60.8%) and 4.c3 (12 games, score 33.3%). About the score, in case I have understood it correctly, in case the score is, for example, 100% it means that White wins every game, 50% would mean that the move has performed equally well for both colors and 0% would mean that Black wins every time, therefore if the score is between 100% and 50% the move is favorable for White and if it is between 50% and 0%, the move has performed in Black's favor. I then played 4...g6 (10 games, score 20%), which is the second most commonly played move, only 4...Nf6 (16 games, score 40.6%) was played often than that. According to that 4...g6 has been the better option. However, the sample size is very small and not that significant in my opinion. The next move 5.Be2 (10 games, score 20%) was the most popular of the three moves that had been tried in that position. It is a natural looking developing move. The next move is the most natural continuation in the position and the only move that has been played there, 5...Bg7 (12 games, score 29.2%).
Because the database also understands that the same position can occur from different move orders, the amount of reference games actually increased after 5...Bg7 and the move 6.O-O that my opponent chose was played in 55 games with a score of 37.3%. It was clearly the most played move, the other two moves 6.Nbd2 (2 games, score 25%) and 6.a3 (1 game, score 0%) have also been tried. Next I played 6...Qb6 (4 games, score 25%), which was the 6th most common move in the position. More common were the moves 6...Nf6 (104 games, score 40.9%), 6...Nh6 (29 games, score 39.7%), 6...e6 (15 games, score 50%), 6...e5 (13 games, score 46.2%) and 6...Bg4 (10 games, score 35%). The move 6...Qb6 has the obvious idea of adding an attacker towards b2 and in case White does nothing to protect it, I could win a pawn by taking on b2 with my bishop. The threat against b2 was protected against with the move 7.c3 (2 games, score 50%). It was barely the most often played move. Two other moves, 7.Nbd2 and 7.Na3 have been tried. Both moves have been played once. The next move 7...Nf6 (2 games, score 0%) was one of the two moves that were played in this position, the other move was 7...Nh6 (1 game, score 100%). It does say in the notation that 8.d4 was a novelty, but I did find one game where it had been played before, it was played on a game between Burckhard Plietz and Walter Heil in 1991. The actual novelty seems to be the move 8...cxd4, in that one game Walter Heil played 8...O-O.
Here is the only reference game I was able to find where both players had a rating over 2500 and reached the same position that I did after 6.O-O.
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