Pirc DefenceB07 – B09
The Pirc is a hypermodern bargain. Black does not contest the centre with pawns at all on the first three moves — …d6, …Nf6 and …g6 put a small pawn on the third rank and a bishop on g7 that stares down the long diagonal at d4, and White is invited to take e4 and d4 and then find out what they are for. The answer is always one of two breaks: …e5, hitting d4 and fixing the centre, or …c5, undermining it from the side. Which one depends on what White did with the extra space: against a quiet Be2-and-castle set-up …e5 is simple and solid, against f4 the e5-square is covered twice and …c5 is the right lever, and against Be3 with Qd2 the king stays in the middle until White's Bh6 has been dealt with. What goes wrong is waiting too long. The Pirc concedes space, and a Pirc player who never plays either break is simply cramped.
Played by
- Vasja Pirc — the Slovenian master who analysed it seriously in the 1940s, and whose name it has carried ever since
- Lev Alburt — the three-time US champion who played it for decades and co-wrote the standard Pirc repertoire book
Model game
Fischer – Korchnoi, Candidates, Curaçao 1962
Next: e4
