The Bootleg Spacebar

Digging deeper to find openings that overperform

Once a month I answer questions from paid subscribers. This week’s question is about reviewing your games with the engine…

Ben asks: What are some openings that score surprisingly well in practice beyond the obvious ones?

As you probably know, I like to look at the Lichess database to find openings that score well at the amateur level. One simple test for this is what I call the bootleg spacebar. If you have any experience working with engines, you probably know that spacebar is the command to make the engine play its top move, so jamming spacebar repeatedly will take you down the engine’s top line. The bootleg spacebar is following the top move in the Lichess database. Whereas the engine spacebar tells you the best moves (more or less), the bootleg spacebar tells you what real opponents are likely to do. The interesting thing is it’s not that hard to find lines where you can bootleg spacebar your way to better or even winning positions.

One trick is that many promising lines do not look like anything special in the stats at the beginning of the line, but there is a sub-variation later that scores extremely well. As long as it’s under your control to enter this sub-variation – that is, you can get there by bootleg spacebarring for the opponent in response to all your moves – this still works (you get to choose your own moves!).

One example of this is the Botvinnik variation of the Semi-Slav. The Semi-Slav does not initially look like anything special…

But after White’s most popular move 5. Bg5 (bootleg spacebar!) we can see that entering into the Botvinnik variation with 5…dxc4 is only the fourth most popular try, but scores much better than the most common 5…Be7. It’s entirely under our control whether we choose to play dxc4, so if this is our plan, it’s the stats following from there that are relevant for our purposes, not the overall Semi-Slav stats.

In general I’ve found that the openings that score well are those that pose the opponent unusual problems at an early stage. While a move like 5…Be7 is not bad, it does not give White any particular problems to solve. They can just apply normal opening principles like developing and castling to get a good position.

In contrast, after 5…dxc4, White will be playing down a pawn in an unconventional pawn structure. Objectively, these positions are not any worse for White than the ones after 5…Be7 (they get good compensation for the pawn), but it’s a much different sort of game. White can’t just rely on standard developing moves. They need to play energetically and precisely to justify the pawn deficit. Whereas after 5…Be7, White has many acceptable moves, after 5…dxc4 they have a much narrower choice.

The Botvinnik has the reputation of being an incredibly complex and hard to learn opening, but recent engine advances have made it a lot easier for the Black side. In particular, on move 10, the old mainline was 10…Nbd7, leading to spectacularly complex play, but modern engines think 10…Be7 is just as good and far simpler. Once again, the stem of the line doesn’t look promising in the stats, but if we follow up with the best moves things start to look much better.

The key moment comes on move 14 when the bad move 14…a6? is dragging down the stats. But after the superior 13…Na6 Black is scoring extremely well!

From there we can bootleg spacebar our way to a completely winning position on move 19.

Of course, the odds of reaching any specific position on move 19 – even the one arising from our opponent’s most common moves – are very low. By that point there are an astronomical number of ways the game could have gone, and even the most common one is a tiny fraction of the total. So we are not expecting to get this exact position very often. The point is that this is an indication that we are posing our opponent some difficult problems. The moves that are natural or intuitive for many of our opponents will lead to a bad or even losing position. To get a good position they need to find challenging or unintuitive moves.

All-in-all, I think the Semi-Slav is a promising option that is not as hard to learn as many people think. With a bit of preparation I would be quite excited to face 5. Bg5. In fact, at the top grandmaster and engine level, the more modest 5. e3 (defending the pawn on c4) seems to have supplanted 5. Bg5 as White’s main try for an advantage, and this is what I’d be less excited to face. Fortunately, 5. Bg5 remains far more popular at the amateur level, and in any case 5. e3 is not bad for Black, it’s just less fun.

If you’re looking to add the Semi-Slav to your repertoire and want a fresh option against 5. Be3, this thread on 6…a6!? by Nikos Ntirlis looks like an interesting starting point. Here too you can bootleg spacebar your way to an advantage, but I’ll leave that for you to figure out.

Here’s a link if you’d like to check out the lines I discussed today as a Lichess study.