The Modern Defense (also known as the Robatsch Defence after Karl Robatsch) is a hypermodern chess opening in which Black allows White to occupy the center with pawns on d4 and e4, then proceeds to attack and undermine this "ideal" center without attempting to occupy it himself. The opening has been most notably used by British Grandmasters Nigel Davies and Colin McNab.
The Modern Defense is closely related to the Pirc Defence, the primary difference being that in the Modern, Black delays developing his knight to f6. (The delay of ...Nf6 attacking White's pawn on e4 gives White the time to sometimes blockade the g7-bishop with c2–c3.) Transpositional possibilities between the two openings are rife. The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings classifies the Modern Defense as code B06, while codes B07 to B09 are assigned to the Pirc. The tenth edition of Modern Chess Openings (1965) grouped the Pirc and Robatsch together as the "Pirc–Robatsch Defense".
Read more about Modern Defense: Main Lines, Fischer's Suggestion: 3.h4!?, Unusual White Responses, Kavalek Vs. Suttles
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or defense:
“The great British Library—an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)
“Of all my Russian books, The Defense contains and diffuses the greatest “warmth”Mwhich may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract chess is supposed to be.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)