Download PGN of February ’26 KID games
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KID, Harry Attack 3.h4 Bg7 4.Nc3 d6 5.e4 c5 6.dxc5!? [E67]
When the Harry is being played by the reigning World Champion, you can say that it has undoubtedly arrived. The game Gukesh, D - Van Foreest, J went 3.h4 Bg7 4.Nc3 d6 5.e4 c5 and now 6.dxc5!?:
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instead of the standard 6.d5. This was hailed as a theoretical novelty, but this isn’t the case. There have been quite a few correspondence games with this move and played by quite serious competitors.
Had Van Foreest not been taken by surprise he might well have played 8...Nc6:
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instead of his safety-first 8...h5. This is how some high-level correspondence games went, and after (8...Nc6) 9.Rc1 Be6 White has played 10.b3 (Kruse, H - Ludgate, A), 10.Nh3 (Boldysh, K - Schmidt, T) and 10.h5 (Johansen, A - Ochs, M). None of these moves have been well explored and all these games were very sharp entertaining. Accordingly I think we’ll see a lot more of 6.dxc5.
There is a safer option for Black in 6...dxc5 (Dziedzina, M - Zholob, A) but Black is slightly worse in the endgame.
KID, Modern Averbakh 5.Be2 0-0 6.Be3 Nc6 [E73]
After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Be2 0-0 6.Be3 Nc6 7.d5 Ne5, White’s main line by far is 8.f4. Yet there are other options, and in Nguyen, T - Sindarov, J White tried 8.Rc1, trying to play more securely:
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The game continued 8...c6 9.Nf3 Nfg4 10.Bg5 f6 11.Bf4 f5, leading to a titanic struggle which Black eventually won. This seems like an improvement over the earlier game, Parkhov, Y - Tzidkiya, Y, in which Black played 11...Nxf3+ and would have had the worst of it had White played 14.Bg4 instead of 14.0-0.
Notwithstanding Sindarov’s win, I expect we’ll see more of 8.Rc1, and not least because Black is getting excellent counterplay after 8.f4:
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In a previous update I gave the game Galaviz Medina, S - Vitiugov, N, which went 8...Neg4 9.Bd2 Nh6 10.Nf3 c6 11.0-0 cxd5 12.cxd5 b5 13.Bd3, but two internet blitz games in Sarana, A - Lazavik, D varied with 13.a3:
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In the first of these Lazavik played 13...Nhg4 14.Kh1 Qb6 15.Qc1 Bd7, but two days later improved with 15...a5!. Perhaps it was the shock of facing a theoretical novelty in a blitz game that led to White blundering with 16.h3?, Black also went wrong and the chaos finally ended in a draw.
That’s all for now, see you next month! Nigel
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