1.c4 g5!? at ChessCafe

Martinovsky - Heinola
White to play and draw.

Where do you put the King?

ChessCafe posts their newest articles on Wednesdays, which generally helps me get over the "hump" in my week. Stefan Bücker's "Over the Horizons" column is a relatively new addition to the rolls there and features off-beat opening analysis from his Kaissiber columns (including a recent series on the Vulture). Today's piece--focused on the surprisingly playable 1.c4 g5!?--makes a fun read. At the very least, if you ever venture the English opening you will be prepared for that crazy 1...g5 player. And it is a line worth some study. Of all the varieties of the so-called "Borg" (the Grob 1.g4 reversed) it seems the most rational, since the idea is to play on the dark squares with c5, d6, Bg7, and h6 -- a plan that White's 1.c4 actually facilitates to some degree. Black also often plays Bxc3+!? to double White's pawns and shut down his play on the queenside.

The article focuses on the game Joel Benjamin-Kari Heinola, Honolulu 1996, and mentions that Heinola played two others with 1.c4 g5 at the same 1996 US Open in Hawaii. I tried to find the other games in my databases but could only turn up one, which I liked enough to annotate. The diagram above comes from that game, with White to play and actually rescue a draw from what seemed like (and soon became) a loss. (Martinovsky chose the wrong King move; what's the right one?) In my search, I also stumbled across the game Hanley -Yuan which also seemed to deserve some notes. It's a fun line for speed chess, that's for sure.