Historical Perspective (cont…)

C. Nikolayev Gambit

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.cxb5 a6 5.bxa6 e6 6.Nc3 exd5 7.Nxd5 Nxa6!? 

I felt that Black would be much bet­ter off if his queen side was de­vel­oped. With this thought I cre­ated the “Niko­layev gam­bit.” The core idea of this dy­namic setup re­volves around ac­tive piece play rather than elab­o­rate pawn struc­tures cou­pled with long term strate­gi­c maneu­ver­ing. The first moves are sim­i­lar to the Benko-Volga gam­bit. How­ever the ideas be­hind them are dif­fer­ent. The main fea­tures of the ac­cepted Benko-Volga are Bish­ops on a6 and g7 (after …g6), while in the Niko­layev gam­bit this never oc­curs. The main fea­tures of the Niko­layev gam­bit are …a6 first (as in the Benko-Volga), …e6 (as in the Blu­men­feld), and …​Nxa6 (never …​Bxa6), quickly fol­lowed by …​Nb4. The dark square bishop comes to g7 in some lines only after …​gxf6.