London SystemD02 / A45
White builds the same house every game: pawns on d4, e3 and c3, the dark-squared bishop *outside* that chain on f4, knights to f3 and d2, and the light-squared bishop on d3 pointing at h7. The pawn on c3 is the whole idea — it holds d4 without asking the c1-bishop to stay home, which is the trade-off that makes almost every other 1.d4 opening complicated. Because the setup is fixed, so are the plans: Ne5 with f4 and a kingside attack, the minority-ish squeeze with Rc1 and c4, or simply meeting …c5 with c3 and letting Black exchange into a slightly worse ending. What goes wrong is playing the moves in a fixed order rather than the setup: 2.Bf4 has to come out before e3 shuts it in, and Bg3 rather than Bxd6 keeps the piece that makes the attack work.
Played by
- Magnus Carlsen — brought it into elite classical and rapid play from 2019, when everyone had assumed it was a club opening
- Gata Kamsky — played it against everyone for twenty years and made 'the London' a serious word among grandmasters
Model game
Carlsen – Ghaem Maghami, Baku Olympiad 2016
Next: d4 — yours
