The Modern Pirc: A Mix of Tactics and Strategy

The main players

There have been some grandmasters who have played this defence in important open tournaments and have had terrific successes with it. One of them is Moldovan GM Viktor Bologan. Bologan, for many years, was one of the best players in the world, with a career-best performance in 2003 when he won the Aeroflot Open and the Dortmund Super tournament with wins over players like Vishy Anand. He peaked in 2012 with a rating of 2734.

Bologan has played the Modern-Pirc in more than 100 classical games and even more rapid blitz games in the past 25 years. Imagine a grandmaster like Bologan teaching you the secrets of openings!

And it is not just Bologan — one of the very best in the world, late GM Vugar Gashimov — was also a fan of this opening as you can see in this game where he crushed GM Francisco Vallejo Pons (2698).

The Azerbaijani great Vugar Gashimov who died at the age of 27. He peaked at 2761 and was the world no. 6.

A mix of tactics and strategy

According to Viktor Bologan, although Black is not occupying the centre for the first few moves, things will change drastically in the middlegame. He says that the Modern-Pirc has deep positional ideas and has been studied by strong players right from the Soviet era!

At 1997 New York Open, the strongest Open of the time, Bologan defended with the Modern-Pirc in 4 games out of nine rounds against players rated above 2600 and won all four, tying for the first place in the tournament.

Outsmarting your opponent even before the real game begins

In the main lines, most of the players opening with 1.e4 will be well prepared. In some cases, they may have studied the latest theory with the help of ChessBase 14 to incredible depths! If you are not young and do not have much time to study theory, you will be crushed without a fight by the younger players who study these things carefully.

But if you begin to play the Modern-Pirc, it will be you who will be in the driver’s seat. Since you will know more about the plans, tactical ideas, and positions arising out of this opening, you will be playing quickly and efficiently. For example:

Bologan explains that in such situations, the white player attacks your pieces and expects you to defend it. Most of the time, they completely forget about counterblows. And this one here is a unique tactical plan that can be found only in the Modern Pirc!

The new ideas will work for a limited time

Chess has become so competitive that if an opening becomes trendy, somebody, somewhere, will come up with improvements and try to refute the defence. However, it will be many months, maybe years, before the new ideas invented by players like Viktor Bologan in the Modern-Pirc will become mainstream to invite a theoretical debate.

Until that day comes, it is a perfect defence to score points in Open tournaments, especially against players rated below 2100. Make hay while the sun shines!

With 100+ classical games in 25 years, Bologan has made a career with this opening.

All you have to do is remember…

Bologan is quick to point out that at move nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6, there are several tricky move orders that you need to remember and you will be having a comfortable position to play with the black pieces. No more waiting games and cold defence, or the sharp, counter-attacking defences that your opponent knows better than you.

It is time to counter-attack in an original manner, and yet, stay solid all the time. Viktor Bologan further assures that the theory is much lesser compared to other openings like the Sicilian, etc. It is a compact opening with limitless tactical and strategic venom. It is very hard to find such a beautiful mixture.

Why should we play only for equality with black? We need not…

Traditional theory says that with white, you have to press for an advantage and with black, you have to defend and defend and fight for equality. If you go for sharp and crazy attacks with black, you end up taking a huge risk of losing.

But, with the Modern-Pirc, you can actually stay solid and yet, fight for a win.

Viktor Bologan: The Modern Pirc €29.90 €25.13 without VAT (for Customers outside the EU) $27.14 (without VAT) • Video running time: 4 h 42 min (English)  • With interactive training including video feedback  • Extra: Database with more than 50 model games • Including CB 12 Reader This DVD can be downloaded directly from the Internet, that way sparing you the few days needed for it to arrive by post. Order this Fritztrainer in the ChessBase Shop

Originally published in ChessBase India.