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A surprising new idea against the London with an important update

AnalysisOpeningChessStrategy
As main lines in the opening continue to get mapped out, players have turned to openings such as the London system (as well as others formerly relegated to to relative sideline status) to try to find fresh and stable positions to surprise the opponent. However what is one to do when these former sidelines become mapped out themselves? The key again is to aim for the element of surprise, not aiming to re-invent the wheel or shake the evaluation to the core but rather to get a type of position more familiar to oneself than the opponent.

The text was originally posted by NM Andrew Liu (@anhao) on his lovely opening blog on chess.c*m. With his permission and collaboration we bring you a reprint of the blog entry in addition to an important update. My own comments and additions on the original post will be noted by my screenname (Vitamixbrand) in the annotations. We Hope you enjoy!

Original post:
With the new engines, it's recently gotten much easier to prepare an equal or playable position with black, and conversely much harder to prove anything with white. So, I've recently taken my main white repertoire into the shop for repairs, and chose the London system as my temporary "replacement", like a rental car. A boring, reliable, clunky, robust rental car.

At my core, I really don't like the London system, but I can't deny that it's effective as a "vacation day" opening. Memorizing the lines is optional (to a certain point), and it keeps the game alive enough to beat lower-rated players while being solid enough to withstand sharp higher-rated players.
But, there's like 20 different ways black can equalize against it. Here's one of the weirdest ways I recently found:

https://lichess.org/study/rLdBk3pK/f1V4bwTZ

The update: Opening maverick and Carlsen second GM Jorden Van Foreest played this variation the day after I shared Andrew's original blog post to my twitter followers. Here is the game:

https://lichess.org/study/rLdBk3pK/ktbtUt3M

Below are two sample games for the theme of a kingside attack vs the doubled g-pawns, a structure we can inflict upon white after they castle (and sometimes even before as we've seen!)

https://lichess.org/study/rLdBk3pK/W7nbjKxg

https://lichess.org/study/rLdBk3pK/Lp0V0KFn

So there you have it! Hopefully you all have enjoyed this new idea and may a new chapter in the trendy London discussion begin! With the sample games to supplement the analysis in addition to the move order overview, the reader is one step closer to forming a complete repertoire against the pesky London system.

Reconnecting