How do you answer 1.c4 as black?

Originally posted by DeepThought
... he uses a move to keep his king safe.

AThousandYoung saw it as preparing for an offensive move with the rook, whereas you seem to be saying it was more a defensive move to tuck the king away.

If IronMan31 sees this, maybe he will enlighten us. 😕

Originally posted by Paul Dirac
AThousandYoung saw it as preparing for an offensive move with the rook, whereas you seem to be saying it was more a defensive move to tuck the king away.

If IronMan31 sees this, maybe he will enlighten us. 😕

It does both, a fact that won't have escaped my opponent. As it turned out the g-file never needed to be occupied by a rook, and the fianchetto makes the rook less effective along that file. If the centre breaks up in a way that allows my bishop to give a check along the a2-g8 diagonal then there could be a way to exploit that that gets me something, so if the opportunity comes along he'd want to put his king on h8. The thing is that my last rook move (move 13) didn't really achieve anything (I thought I was being clever putting 'x-ray' pressure on his queen) so I'd presented him with a chance to make a free improvement.