Barden L., Hartston W., Keene R. The King's Indian Defence

Batstford, 1973. — 344 p.The King’s Indian Defence clearly belongs to the ‘hyperm odern’ group of responses to 1 P -Q 4 in th at Black concedes his opponent the right to occupy the centre with pawns a t the start of play.However, it was hardly used by the ‘hypermodern’ masters at all. A rudimentary form of the King’s Indian is nascent in the games of Chigorin, bu t in the 1920’s it was employed only by British masters, such as Yates, and — sporadically — by Reti, Tartakower and Euwe. Its dynamic potential was first recognized by the rising generationof Soviet players in the 1940’s (notably Bronstein and Boleslavsky) and by the 1950’s it was established as one of the most popular open­ings in tournament praxis. If we examine the games of the 1953 Candidates Tournam ent it transpires th at one fifth of the games played opened with the K ing’s Indian.Upto the present day the King’s Indian has occupied a prominent place in the repertoire of the world’s leading masters. Perhaps itsgreatest exponent is the W orld Champion, R obert Fischer, and references to his elegant victories with this defence will be found passim throughout this volume.We conclude our introductory remarks w ith the full score of an ideal Black win conducted by Fischer from the ‘World Blitz Champion­ship’ held in Yugoslavia in 1970.The possibility of bringing off such typical avalanche attacks against the white king as in this game forms one of the m ain reasons for the
addiction of so many players to the King’s Indian Defence.