The "Rest" Pawn Structure?
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 2:20AM
Dennis Monokroussos

ChessBase Magazine has lots of good material, but the supplementary "Extra" disk they send in between the "real" issues are mostly to fill in the gaps by supplying all the unannotated games played over a given period. However, even the CBM Extra disks offer a little bonus material, so that you're not just getting the equivalent of TWIC on a disk.

The latest issue of CBM Extra has three short video clips, one by Leonid Kritz and two by Valeri Lilov. My question concerns the latter's presentations, in which he discusses something he calls the "Rest" pawn structure. I've been around chess a very long time, and have never heard that term used at all. In fact, I did a Google search for it and found nothing. Lilov uses it to refer to a pawn structure with White pawns on c4 and d4 (with no e-pawn) vs. Black pawns on c6 and e6 (and no d-pawn). (This can most easily arise in a Caro-Kann, French, or Semi-Slav.) I'm certainly familiar with that structure, but the only name I've ever heard applied to anything in that ballpark is for the Black formation, which is sometimes called the Fort Knox if it arose after Black swapped off his light squared bishop for a White knight (on f3).

Has anyone who hasn't seen these video clips ever heard it called the "Rest" structure? Is this some sort of Bulgarian label? (Lilov is Bulgarian.) Knowledgeable readers, help!

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