Szuhanek Ranko. Beating the Najdorf rare lines

Šahovski informator, 2021. — 463 p.
ISBN: 978-86-7297-121-7.Chess has changed a lot lately. While the age of high performance has dropped considerably, we witness a “total” approach to this fantastic game in terms of, literally, “everything is possible”.The Najdorf variation is one of the main weapons Black applies in the Sicilian Defence. The quick development of the main lines has pushed many players to look for other possibilities to fight against it. Lines which were not played ten years ago, became popular even among the elite players, who hope to have a proper chess game on the board, thus avoiding computer-based home preparation. The fact that a Najdorf variation is a true option when playing for a win is established by the fact that many World Champions have employed it and along with them almost all top players like Ian Nepomniachtchi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Alireza Firouzja, Radosław Wojtaszek, Alexander Grishchuk, Boris Gelfand, and many others. Many of them are also playing the same variation with both colors, preferring the rare lines as a surprise weapon hoping to win the psychological battle from the very beginning.I remember to have played my first ever “Najdorf” as a child, back in 1981. Forty years have passed since then, and it is still my number one weapon against the Sicilian Defence. As the present work advocates Black’s side of dealing with the rare lines, I have tried to give some directions where Black would find himself comfortable to equalize in most of the cases, and even get an edge right from the very beginning. It might sound a little too much, but in most cases, the rare lines do not bring White the expected plus, but they still can be used as a surprise weapon.I believe the instructive games that lie in the following pages would just be of great help for those who want to improve their knowledge and become more familiar with the ideas of some particular positions. As a hint, there is in many cases the exchange sacrifice on c3, which eventually brings Black both positional and tactical superiority. This idea is often neglected even by top players, who could have employed it for an easier game or a possible way to victory. Even though there is nothing visible immediately, the whole White concept falls apart after the Rxc3 sacrifice. The e4 pawn may or may not be captured, but the ruined pawn structure (a weak king - if the long castle was played) and the impossibility to fight for the d5 square give Black lots of prospects to play for a win. The d5 pawn push is, however, the desired objective, but there are pros and cons of that concept also, which are explained in great detail as well.This book contains all the rare lines a rational player could employ when playing White. One can also find in it the most important ideas which, in my opinion, can take Black towards a comfortable opening outcome.Consequently, these lines are not free of poison if Black does not know how to react. However, the rare lines are becoming more and more popular even at the top level, and the percentage of the games played is growing every year. This is a clear sign that White is always in search of new ways to fight the Najdorf variation, and the future may bring us more surprises. We can witness lines such as 6.a4 or 6.h3 spreading to a larger amount of games so that they would hardly be considered rare anymore in the next couple of years.One way or another, I believe that strong players would also develop some of these lines for White’s benefit, as the future will surely bring us chances for improvements and further development of these lines.