Table of Contents
Van Geet Opening
The Van Geet opening is an interesting way to get into the game with white, and it’s quite appealing for masters these days. One of the biggest problems of the elite level of play in chess is that everyone seems to know everything about theory.
It’s really difficult to surprise a master with your opening, no matter how weird it could be. This leads most of the elite games to boring draws and masters kind of get stuck in the opening if they want to play for advantage.
So, they always like the idea of trying out openings like this that seem to lead anywhere, but that actually have their idea. And the idea is specifically to go against the opening preparation of your rival.
The best part about the Van Geet opening is that is so easy to take him out of his opening book. All of this without compromising too much the position is like you simply hand your opponent a turn to completely confuse him.
If you combine this along with opening preparation against your rival in specific you are ready to go. If you want to learn more about the Van Geet opening, make sure you read until the end.
The Main lines of the Van Geet opening
First, to get into the Van Geet opening you should play the following move: 1.Nc3, and this is considered to be the Van Geet. Now you clearly see the idea we were talking about, this gives black two options that we are going to talk about now.
But this is greatly advantageous for us, if you know your opponent plays the Sicilian you can make him go wrong. Imagine you play 1.Nc3 and he wants to play the Sicilian 1…c5, you can now play 2.d2 and he gets to play the queen’s pawn.
And now you have taken your rival into your terrain. Differently, if your opponent plays the queen’s pawn, you can play e4!
After 1.Nc3 there are two main moves:
- c5
- d5
First, c5 is the move that can take to the Sicilian systems, there are many games, white can play e4 and transpose to the Sicilian. However, there are also more options, and this is the magic of the Van Geet opening: You are the king of transpositions!
A possible mainline so you have an idea of the opening is: 1.Nc3 c5 2.e4 Nc6 3.Nf3 e6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4 d6 We transposed to a Sicilian defense from the Van Geet opening!
Say that you want to play the English: 1.Nc3 c5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 d5 4.d3 Nc6 5.Bg5 Bf5 6.Nf3 e6 7.O-O Be7 8.Re1 There you go.
Or if you prefer to play a queen’s pawn opening: 1.Nc3 c5 2.d4 d5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bf4 Nf6 5.e3 And you end up in a London system.
There are so many things that you can do with white because the opening choice is very flexible. This is why there isn’t much to talk about the move d5 either because it would be more of the same thing:
Simply transpose to the opening you like!
Plans and ideas in the Van Geet opening
The Van Geet opening is not an opening that we should take on and study and make a whole repertoire from it. Because we will have to study others openings that actually develop a plan.
Or, you can also play something completely rare and unknown, that’s also a good tactic to confuse your rivals! So you are not going to develop plans that are proper from the Van Geet opening, but from other openings.
For example, let’s take a look at the following game by the GM Levon Aronian!
How about this other interesting game by GM Richard Rapport!
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The Excellent Queen’s Indian Defense
