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A sharp Berlin?! Input appreciated!

I must clarify the points on which you disagree, because I think that our disagreement is minimal :) .

1) 9...Be7 is a major variation. It is not objectively inaccurate. It has been played at the top level by Ponomariov and Eljanov. A brief look at the lines after 9...Be7 convinced me that it was much more complicated than the lines I had studied in 2000 on the basis of Kramnik's choice 9...Bd7. That's why I vote against it for amateurs. You seem to have a good experience with 9...Be7, on the other hand, so unless you're a professional, you are a living counter-argument :) .

2) Actually I make no claim that h6 is needed after 9.Rd1+ Ke8. It's the variation that I study for Black because it was Kramnik's choice and my claim is that 10.Nc3 h6 leads to playable positions for Black. There might be other ways, this one is sound and reasonably understandable.

3) I should have stressed that Black's bishop pair is not a telling factor in this variation as in the Exchange Spanish, for example. That's indeed a reason why 9...Be7 is playable.

4) 10...Nh4 is not my recommendation. Actually I know next to nothing in the 9...Be7 variation (except that it looks scary for non-professionals :) ) so I wouldn't make a suggestion there.
#10 @ChessDoofus If white wants to play Rad1, then why does not he so? Develop Nb1 (Knights first - Tarrasch), develop Bc1, play Rad1.
@tpr He does. But white would rather do it with check to give black no choice but to put the king on e8, because among other things, the time it takes for white to bring the rook on a1 to d1 allows black the choice to put the king either on e8 or on c8/b7.

The most bothersome piece for white to develop in the Berlin is arguably the bishop that starts on c1. If white could put the rooks on e1 and d1 without having to move that bishop he would have a little more of an initiative than usual in the Ke8 lines, and the Kc8 lines would be simply impossible.

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