Harald Keilhack: Knight on the Left: 1.Nc3

Kania Verlag, hardcover, Englisch, ISBN: 978-3-931192-29-7, 384 Seiten, 2005.

Studies of an Unorthodox Chess Opening.

This book covers the opening 1.Nc3. Opening? - Oh, yes! Many consider 1. Nc3 to be just a move, which might be playable, but "hardly has any independent value", rather transposing to 1.e4 systems.
In this context, Khalifman's five volume opus 1.Nf3 - Opening for White according to Kramnik springs to mind. In an odyssey of more than 1300 pages, the former FIDE world Champion proves that the "knight on the right" 1 Nf3 is a good move, but not an opening in itself! He doesn't at all cover the Reti (with which 1.Nf3 is usually connected), but a multitude of openings including the King's Indian, the Queen's Gambit (Slav, Orthodox, Accepted etc), the Dutch Defence, the English Opening and even some lines of the Sicilian (namely the Maroczy setup against the Accelerated Dragon); besides, some peculiarities like the Grünfeld without d2-d4. Quintessentially, 1.Nf3 is presented as a very subtle transposition tool, by which - to simplify a bit - undesirable lines of the aforementioned openings can be excluded.
So, how are matters after 1.Nc3? There's a bunch of established independent concepts, e.g. after 1.Nc3 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 or 1.Nc3 d5 2.e4 d4 3.Nce2. It's mostly possible, but not always advisable to stay clear of all transpositions. Typical questions that a 1.Nc3 practitioner will face are:
After 1.Nc3 d5 2.e4 e6, should he go for a French by 3.d4 or try some independent setup?
After 1.Nc3 c5, should he play 2.e4 immediately, possibly going for a Closed Sicilian (3.g3) or for the Grand Prix Attack (3.f4)? Or transpose to a StanSicilian by 2.Nf3 Nc6 (2...d6, 2...e6) 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 and 5.e4?
Or strive for the very tricky indepenlines, keeping the option of e2-e4, transposing to some Standard lines, as an "emergency exit" in reserve?
After 1.Nc3 g6, should he return to 2.e4, should he go for the fierce 2.h4 or should he stay flexible by 2.Nf3 and 2.g3, not yet revealing his intentions?
In fact, every leading 1.Nc3 player has his own answers to those questions. Transat a later stage are full of subtleties, which will be revealed in this work. If one wants to switch from 1.e4 to 1.Nc3, this is even an advantage: you may start by playing 1.e4 e6/c6/Nf6 2.Nc3 (reaching some lines from Chapter IV), later on you play 1.Nc3, firstly transposing quite often to 1.e4 systems, then less and less.
This book covers every possibility after 1.Nc3 which at least has some indepenvalue. Additionally, some "secret" lines which belong to 1.e4 openings but in practice occur more often via 1.Nc3, or which have some features of this opening. For example, such Anti-Caro-Kann lines as 1.e4 c6 2.Nc3 d5 3.f4 or 3.Qf3!?. Typically such lines are neglected in opening manuals.
A special focus is on late transpositions (e.g., on move 6) to 1.e4 positions under favourable circumstances! I have excluded only 1.Nc3 d5 2.d4, which leads to the Veresov Opening after 2... Nf6 3.Bg5, to the French after 2...e6 3.e4 or the Caro-Kann after 2...c6 3.e4.
Besides transpositions from 1.Nc3 to 1.e4 openings, there are also some in the other direction, e.g. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d5 3.Nc3!?, 1.e4 d5 2.Nc3!?, 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 c5 3.Nf3 (a basic position from Chapter V); one can argue that 1.e4 c5 2.f4 d5 3.Nc3 is also truly a 1.Nc3 position.

An unrecognised opening
Unlike unorthodox openings such as 1.b4 or 1.g4, 1.Nc3 by no means compromises White's position, and at the same time it doesn't limit the first player to some extravagant strategy or other. On the contrary, this move is in perfect harmony with classical principles of opening play like development and gaining influence on the centre (keeping an eye on e4 and d5). Therefore, it sounds strange that 1.Nc3 is not yet recognised as an opening in its own right. Admittedly, the c-pawn is blocked, but in every opening, every move kills off some option or other.
Actually, 1.Nc3 offers exceptionally good possibilities of winning a miniature, thanks to knight tactics and supported by the accelerated development of the minor pieces. The older 1.Nc3 literature almost reads like a collection of traps and miniatures. However, the general level of chess is increasing, and one cannot expect that the average player of our day will repeat the errors that some semi-celebrities of the past committed - not to mention modern computer-aided correspondence chess. So, this book isn't at all about cheap traps but will establish a deep theoretical and strategic basis for the further exploration of the Knight on the Left.

Between Worlds
I was attracted by the unique hybrid statof a so-called "unorthodox" opening which has nevertheless so many lines which connect to traditional openings. 1.Nc3 is still labelled as an "unorthodox" opening and accordingly, it's treated poorly in main-stream publications like Encyclopedia of Chess Informant. On the other hand, many positions which arise can only be reliably assessed when one compares them carefully to related, but well-explored positions from Standard openings. Often enough, enthusiastic amateur authors of books about unorthodox or gambit openings are lacking in general knowledge of standard positions, which results in blatant misjudgements. In this book, I do my best to transfer knowledge between these two, so different, worlds. This also includes, by the way, comparisons to positions with colours reversed, which often allow striking insights.
Some methodological issues:
I agree very much with the maxim that if a given position can occur in various places (via transposition), all relevant games and analysis have to be presented together. This necessarily leads to a huge number of cross references. Whenever various move orders can lead to the same position, I have tried to figure out which one is most precise for both parties - sometimes this wasn't easy at all (e.g. in Section 17). Unfortunately, for instance, Dunnington's book is rather sloppy in this respect.
"Between Worlds" was also a maxim when choosing games from correas well from over-the-board chess, from grandmaster as well as from amateur practice. This was the case too in my methodological choice to keep the sample game approach (with deep strategic explanations), but at the same time to supply dense theoretical coverage. The fact that this book has expanded to nearly 400 pages should not distract from the fact that even with today's knowledge some fundamental issues around move 5 are still unresolved. With regard to possible future discoveries I haven't cut off lines that have to be regarded as unfavourable from today's point of view.

History and Naming
1.Nc3 was first mentioned in the 1st edition (1843) of "Bilguer - Handbuch des Schachspiels" by Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa. According to Adrian Harvey/Stefan Bücker (Kaissiber 15), the first recorded 1.Nc3 game was Kieseritzky-Desloges, France 1847 (p.21). The game Napoleon-Madame de Remusat, Malmaison Castle 1804 (p.10), is probably a hoax. Later on, 1.Nc3 was occasionally tried by world class players, e.g. Blackburne-Noa, London 1883, or Bogoljubow-Zubarev, St.Petersburg 1925. But these were solitary cases, comparable to Morozevich-Kasparov, Frankfurt 2000 (see Game 83) in our own days. It is not the Professionals, but rather enthusiastic amateurs and grandmasters of correspondence chess who have advanced the development of this opening. Thus, about 1910 the Czech Johann Kotrc started to play 1.Nc3 regularly, as did some years later Ted Dunst from New York. After 1945, the Baden master Leonhard Hanke attracted attention by playing 1.Nc3 in southem Germany. Further progress is closely connected with the contemporary heroes mentioned below.
The opening 1.Nc3 has had many names; it is possible to say that everybody who wrote about it has used his own name. So, there had been, among others, the Romanian, Kotrc, Dunst, Sleipner and the van Geet Openings (to mention just the most widespread ones). Finally, I opted for the neutral Linksspringer or Knight on the Left, which was preferred by my mentor in chess publishing, the Randspringer editor Rainer Schlenker.

Der Autor, FM Harald Keilhack, wurde mit seinem Buch über die Tarrasch-Verteidigung (1993) bekannt, 1995 folgte 1...Sc6 aus allen Lagen - das Linksspringerkonzept mit Schwarz. Als Herausgeber redigiert er alle Titel des Schachverlags Kania, daneben bespricht er in der Zeitschrift Schach aktuelle Literatur und führt eine wöchentliche Schachkolumne in der Stuttgarter Zeitung.