Do you like Adventure?Do you like “secret gardens” like the Novel “Secret Garden” - which we can use to spice up our chess and wake up from the over-trodden paths which can put us to sleep? Do you like Surprise? Are you sometimes a Maverick? Be a Top Gun in chess with 1. Nc3: )Surprise is a powerful weapon in Chess. Kingscrusher has made great use of 1.Nc3 in online chess especially at faster time controls to get much better positions often than following standard opening theory. This course dissects the surprise value of 1. Nc3. It shows with greater informational preparation you can force the opponent to have to improvise more than you from early on in the game and win much more easily than playing in a more conventional manner. The suggestion was made by one of Kingscrusher’s non-chess-playing friends once about playing a surprising opening move to bypass a master’s preparation. This is that kind of move - leading often into unique relatively unexplored territories. There is often a choice to transpose back to standard territory or investigate the powers of the unique values and positions that 1. Nc3 can generate. Even modern top-flight Grandmasters are making use of Nc3-based systems to surprise opponents such as Baadur Jobava and Richard Rapport. We can make use of transpositions sometimes to the relatively unexplored territory where these Grandmasters and others have cut through enormous amounts of opening theory to get Nc3-based positions where they have room to be creative and resourceful in original positions rather than the “Beaten tracks” of opening theory. 1. Nc3 is known by many names - in fact, it has some of the biggest alternative name lists of any opening in existence. Queen’s Knight Attack OpeningQueen’s Knight OpeningDunst OpeningHeinrichsen OpeningBaltic OpeningVan Geet OpeningSleipnir OpeningKotr’s OpeningMetrovi OpeningRomanian OpeningMillard’s OpeningKnight on the Left, and (in German) der Linksspringer. Kingscrusher has made great use of 1.Nc3 especially in faster time controls. 1. Nc3 tends to take opponents by surprise early on and encourages them to improvise badly away from their more theoretically prepared territory. 1. Nc3 can also be a great transpositional tool heading for some great attacking 1.Nc3-based destinations. Kingscrusher’s use of it often gets amazing attacking opportunities early on because opponents tend to want to chase the knight to g3 and in doing so create light square weaknesses. If Bc4 is allowed, thenWhite often has amazing attacking potential making use of the h-pawn quite often later. But there is a more solid “boring” alternative in 1. Nc3 d5 2.d4 with a view to playing the Jobava London system - a name which GMSimon Williams has given to the particular variation of the London system where a Knight is placed on c3 instead of a pawn on c3. Some very strong correspondence chess players make use of 1. Nc3 frequently, and it is occasionally seen over the board as well. This course aims to establish an objective “truth” for this opening and its possible effectiveness at different time controls of bullet, blitz, standard one-day chess, and correspondence chess, which is the ultimate test of its “Scalability”
