Back on the Viking study after a short break

Last post, I looked at a Viking-French-Blackmar-Diemer attack when black decided to capture the offered pawn on e4 : 1.d4 Nf6 2.f3 d5 3.e4 e6 4.Be3 dxe4 5.fxe4 Nxe4 6.Nd2 Nxd2 7.Qxd2.

From the resulting massacre, we can conclude that blacks 6th move is certainly not optimal : it does exchange a piece, but brings the white queen into the game and allows for white castling queenside quickly. So 6...Nxd2 is certainly no good. A quick look at my silicon assistant tells me that 6...Nf6 is far better.

let's look at the lines after 6...Nf6 7.Ngf3 and compare this to the normal Euwe defense`( black to move )

It is obvious the Viking attack differs in two ways from the regular Euwe defense
- the bishop is on e3 instead of g5. On e3, it discourages the typical French c5 break, but obvioulsy, it does little to attack the black defense - if white wants to attack lateron, an additional move will be needed to redloy it to g5.
- the knight is on d2 instead of c3. This should not make much difference, since it goed most of the time to e4 anyway. Also, black can defend d4 with a pawn on c3, which allows for the white queen to go to c2.

So based on these two observations, it seems the Viking attack is an inferior version of the Euwe defense - silicon analysis seems to confirm this.

But is sure is a decent surprise weapon against a french defender that refuses to head into the Blackmar Diemer.