Example positions from Levy's NYC Labor Day GM Norm tournament games:
Game 2 (black): In this caro kann Levy played a6, which is not shown because it’s played 3% of the time in the lichess masters database, and only options played less than 1% of the time or 15 times total are shown.
Game 5 (white): the common lines are e4 (what levy played), Nf3, or Bf4, but it’s early enough in the game you can play a bunch of random moves and they’re objectively ok. Some of the positions look more symmetric, others look more imbalanced, I’m not sure if any are good but they’re interesting.
The common move here is e5, natural to kick the knight, but Levy remembered some course lines or something he knew was ok with f3.
Game 6 (black): Levy had a feeling before the game that his opponent would play 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. Nf3 cxd4 5. Nxd4 Nc6, the “colonoscopy” variation of the caro kann, an annoying and painful line. There aren’t many different options until 6. Be3 which is not a normal move, after that there are a lot of options. Levy said he evaluated Nh6 as maybe slightly better for black but didn’t play it, but that it’d give black the bishop pair and g file, and white’s e pawn would be weak. Also my amateur guess is black saves a move because normally if you play Nh6 white takes it in one move, but here white first wasted a turn on Be3. Anyways after Be3, black has many options leela says are playable.
Game 7 (white): Nf3 is played 92% of the time here in lichess masters database, then 7% play d5. But you *could* play other moves, which would only be slightly worse, although idk if they do anything interesting.
Similarly here instead of Qc2 or Qb3 (the two common moves) you could drop the queen back to c3, which again is fine for the engine but you’d have to look deeper to see how it’s different.
Game 8 (black): various options in Caro Kann Tarkatower
