May-03-25
 | | FSR: After further experience with this line, I don't think that 3...Nxe4, the Damiano Petroff, deserves the dubious (?!) punctuation I previously attached to it. If Black knows the line well, it is a perfectly reasonable way to play for a draw, and arguably an easier way to do so than the standard 3...d6. As everyone knows, the usual Petroff lines give White only a small advantage. At depth 47, Stockfish 17.1 gives White the same small +0.21 edge after either 3.Nxe5 or 3.d4. (The third best move, 3.Nc3, is 0.00.) After 3.Nxe5, unsurprisingly, it gives Black's best response as 3...d6, not 3...Nxe4. The Damiano Petroff seems, at first blush, ridiculous. White wins a center pawn for seemingly nothing. It seems unbelievable that White doesn't have a line that gives him at least a large advantage. Maybe a winning advantage. But somehow he doesn't. Oddly, White's best line is to give back the extra pawn and play for an advantage in the resulting ending. It is accepted that best play for both sides is 4.Qe2 Qe7! 5.Qxe4 d6 6.d4 dxe5! 7.dxe5! Nc6 8.Nc3! (giving back the pawn) Qxe5 9.Qxe5 Nxe5. 
click for larger viewThis position doesn't seem like much an achievement for White. He was up a center pawn a moment ago, and has, seemingly inexplicably, given it up to reach an almost symmetrical position where Black is the one with the more centralized knight. But it is White's move, and the c7 pawn/square is a little tender for Black. White can target it with either 10.Nb5 or 10.Bf4, when moving the knight away would hang the c-pawn. Those moves are the only tries for a White advantage, and are about equally good. Black will have to make some concessions to hold onto c7. In the 10.Nb5 line he ends up moving his king and falling seriously behind in development after 10...Bb4+! 11.Bd2! Bxd2+ 12.Kxd2 Kd8 13.Re1, and now the retrograde 13...Nd7! (best, incredibly). In the 10.Bf4 line, he ends up with a weak pawn on d6 (after White takes the bishop with Nxd6+) or e5 (after White takes the knight with Bxe5 and Black recaptures with ...fxe5). In the former case, White also gets the bishop pair. In the latter case, Black sometimes castles queen-side and lets White grab a pawn with Nxa7+. Since I had Stockfish examine the position after 2...Nf6 to depth 47, I decided to do the same to the key Damiano position arising after 9...Nxe5. It turns out that Stockfish's assessment of that position is similar to that after 2...Nf6. (There is a difference, of course, in that both sides have played an extra seven moves (or 14 ply) after 9...Nxe5.) At depth 47/68 Stockfish gives 10.Nb5 as +0.23 and 10.Bf4 as +0.19. Once again, only a slight advantage, and very similar to the numbers after 3.Nxe5 and 3.d4 from the original Petroff position. |
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