Bogo Indian Defence by GM Magesh and GM Arun

This week we shall study the Bogo Indian Defence. Recently, the Catalan has become one of the most played systems and the specialty of this system is that White keeps playing for a win without any risk. For many players to play against the Catalan is a nightmare. Hence we decided to write an idea against the Catalan which has recently come up at the top level.

This idea was employed extensively by Ulf Andersson in the late 80's. He even managed to hold his own against some of the chess greats like Karpov, Spassky etc. Black's idea in this opening is simple: exchange the dark-squared bishop and then just keep playing like the Queen's Indian Defence. It is basically a mixture of both Bogo Indian and Queen's Indian. Jobava Baadur in his game against Sasikiran employed this opening and even came close to snatching a full point.

White really never got any chance in this game. It was black who actually had some chances when white took on unnecessary risk. Our next game is between Topalov and Carlsen, Nanjing 2010. Topalov had some edge after the opening, but soon misplayed his position and lost his way.

Black could have equalized pretty easily with 20...Rc8 and only after 20...cxd4 white got some chances to fight for an advantage. Topalov was not in his best form and soon he lost all his advantage and managed to lose in the end. Basically black's system is pretty solid and his ideas are simple. He just needs to simplify the position after the central break c6-c5 and keep waiting for the opponent to commit any errors or sign the truce. Hence, for the time being this idea is working very well for black and it is white's turn to find a new idea against this super solid system.