Hauptrecept

I have been working through Gerhart Gunderam's "Neue Eroffungswege" this week, and I have to admit, there are some great lines in it. Of course, this has to been seen in the context of the time of writing this book - 1961 - when there was no silicon assistent available...

Let's have a look at a line presneted on page 26 - Gunderam labels this as "Stammanalysen meiner Verteitigung, Hauprezept", roughly translated as the main line of his defense against the Blackmar Diemer.

Analysis Gerhart Gunderam, 1961.
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3
Gunderam does not cover the move 2.f3 - so it is obvious he has to deal with the Gubsch defense a lot.
2...d5 3.e4 dxe4 4.f3 exf3 5.Nxf3 Bf5 6.Ne5 e6 7.g4 Bg6 (diagram)

The main position in the Gunderam defense.

In addition to to tsandard move 8.Qf3, Gunderam now also considers 8.Bg2 c6 9.h4 butblack's reply 9...Bb4 is quite strong.

8.Qf3 c6 9.g5 Bh5 ! (diagram)

The author correctly indicates 9...Nd5 as inferior and suggests 9...Bh5 as the best defense, but now Gerhart misses the best white move.

10.Qh3 ??
We all know that 10.Qf2 or Qf4 is needed here. I will come back on that difficult choice in my next post. The text move is logical, it attacks a piece whose defender is attacked. But unfortunately black is to move first.

10...Qxd4 (diagram)

Gunderam still suggests 11.Nd3 Bg4 12.Qh4 but it is obvious that black is winning.
My computer finds 11.Nxf7 Kxf7 12.gxf6 Bg4 13.Qg3 but black is ahead.

So we can only applaude the work performed by Gunderam. His analysis proved to be invaluable for the development of the Blackmar Diemer. Obvuiously he misses some moves, but the ideas in his work on defending against the Blackmar Diemer ( eg 9...Bh5 ) have contributed a lot to modern theory.