Winning with the Italian

A highly unusual game was played by Kramnik against Radjabov. There was a recent trend of playing the Italian with a4 instead of Bb3, but it wasn’t really clear why this should be so great. Finally Kramnik showed the big idea: By playing a4 white restricts the black queenside and prepares to expand in this area. The bishop on c4 can still drop back to f1 where it protects the white king against a black pawnstorm, while on b3 it either gets exchanged off with Be6 or it has to drop back to c2 where it doesn’t do anything. The knight on d2 doesn’t drop back to f1, but goes to c4 where it supports the white queenside attack. At move 18 the full transposition to Kramnik’s favorite setup against the KID was complete. The only real difference is the bishop on a7 which may or may not be better placed there than on g7. It is very difficult to understand all the subleties, but that was a brilliant performance by Big Vlad. For me this was the game of the year even though it’s still September.