Suitable defence for average club player against 1. d4?

[Jon Mahony]

Personally I don’t think you can go far wrong with 1...d5 - the only move you really need to worry about is 2.c4 and even then I always find it fairly easy to draw in a QGD, with a little known side line I play. QGA is a good choice too.

Anything else white does isn’t that great and fairly easy to equalise against - though lately I have new found respect for the London System after a couple of strong players have used it against me.

The only thing about 1…d5 that annoys me is the QG exchange variation, which I always seem to get a really uncomfy game against, and occasionally some chancer will chuck out a B-D gambit which I hate playing from the black side, and have to go into a French.

I agree about the KID, I played that for a while and found the same problem of space difficulties and no counter play - okay you won’t get a great deal of counter play in a QGD but you will have some of the board you can call your own at least.

Have also tried the Dutch, Benoni and Clarendon Court defence, none of which I really got along with.

If I was a Benoni player I wouldn’t be worried about no 2.c4 though, you can get b5 in for free!

[Michael Farthing]

Hmmm, the Dutch is fine if Black knows what they are doing! If not, expect a few short sharp defeats

Mmm. Tried that in my youth too. In fact, it's my only game on chessbase. [I lost: Not quite a short sharp defeat. More of a slow, certain defeat].

Care to post it on here to share your embarrassment?

In the unlikely event that anyone really wants to look at it I'm sure they're up to finding it for themselves! [Anyway, I don't know how to do that fancy posting of games that lets you play through them - which at this moment is a happy condition to be in].

[Arshad Ali]

Has no-one suggested the Slav or Semi-Slav? Are those and the Nimzo-Indian suitable for average club players?

Slav, yes, and what I'd recommend myself. Semi-Slav requires a taste for tactical complications. Nimzo is what I play myself but I'm not happy with it. Other than Slav, QGD and QGA are quite all right. In the QGD maybe something like the Cambridge Springs or the Tartakower.

[Jon Mahony]

Heres a nice tournament game I played recently, I won’t embarrass the poor bloke by naming names:

1.d4, d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 Bf5? 7.Qb3 Nbd7 8.Nxd5 Nxd5 9.Qxd5 Bb4+ 10. Ke2 Qxg5 11.Nf6 Be3+ was a nice finish

Of course my 6…Bf5 was inaccurate, you’ve really got to go c6 there, I think he’d have had better luck taking the b-pawn

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Heres a nice tournament game I played recently, I won’t embarrass the poor bloke by naming names:

1.d4, d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 Bf5? 7.Qb3 Nbd7 8.Nxd5 Nxd5 9.Qxd5 Bb4+ 10. Ke2 Qxg5 11.Nf3 Bd3+ was a nice finish

Of course my 6…Bf5 was inaccurate, you’ve really got to go c6 there, I think he’d have had better luck taking the b-pawn

Er, I've put pgn tags round that, and the last two half-moves make no sense.

EDIT: Ah, I see. Corrected to 11.Nf3 Bd3+.

[Matt Mackenzie]

I think the Queen's Gambit Accepted is very suitable for club players.

That's partly because it's easy to understand, and partly because it's not played very much at club level, so White will possibly be less familiar with it than other defences.

But I think you need another defence up your sleeve in case you need to play for a win. My suggestion would be the Benoni.

Agree about the QGA - and can lead to interesting chess too

Re a possible "plan B" - IMO the Albin Countergambit is quite playable at *club* level

[Rob Thompson]

I'm fairly late to this thread, but I'm not sure I agree woo much with your assessment of the KID in the first place. I started playing it years ago when I was quite weak without a huge amount of theory knowledge, and to this day the only opening theory book I have on it is Joe Gallagher's starting out. Whilst there are some very theory-laden lines, you can avoid them fairly easily as black in most cases as long as you know the ideas you're going for.

[AustinElliott]

Can't really see openings being that critical at the sub-180 level. The main point is presumably to choose an opening where the positions typically arising suit your style, i.e. where the ideas/ piece positions / closed-vs-open / tactical-vs-strategic nature come 'naturally' to you.

Continuing in this vein, the major plus of the KID for us club patzers (and hence I suspect its popularity) is surely that the first six or seven moves, and quite possibly the entire main strategy (..e5 ..Nf6-h5/e8/d7 ..f5) are the same against almost anything white does, within reason.... hence less need for lots of theory which we can't possibly remember. But presumably the same must be broadly true of learning a mainstream QGD set-up for Black against 1.d4?

The main danger at same level presumably comes whenever white has nasty obscure trick-laden gambit options against one's chosen set-up / move-order, like the Staunton/Lisitsyn type gambits against the Dutch.

Agree / disagree?

[Roger de Coverly]

But presumably the same must be broadly true of learning a mainstream QGD set-up for Black against 1.d4?

I have long thought that the point of the Kings Indian for club players was that in many lines you attempt to gain the initiative and then just point your pieces and pawns at the enemy King. That can cover up a multitude of positional sins which declining the Queens Gambit will not let you recover from. So many lines of the QGD are just distressingly passive leaving you struggling to equalise and then maybe outplay your opponent in an ending.

[Arshad Ali]

Can't really see openings being that critical at the sub-180 level. The main point is presumably to choose an opening where the positions typically arising suit your style, i.e. where the ideas/ piece positions / closed-vs-open / tactical-vs-strategic nature come 'naturally' to you.

Continuing in this vein, the major plus of the KID for us club patzers (and hence I suspect its popularity) is surely that the first six or seven moves, and quite possibly the entire main strategy (..e5 ..Nf6-h5/e8/d7 ..f5) are the same against almost anything white does, within reason.... hence less need for lots of theory which we can't possibly remember. But presumably the same must be broadly true of learning a mainstream QGD set-up for Black against 1.d4?

The main danger at same level presumably comes whenever white has nasty obscure trick-laden gambit options against one's chosen set-up / move-order, like the Staunton/Lisitsyn type gambits against the Dutch.

Agree / disagree?

Even at the sub-180 level, players come prepared for the KID. They may play the Bayonet attack (9.b4) or 9.Ne1 followed by 10.a4 (pioneered by Korchnoi, which I play myself). I've beaten many players with the Korchnoi system -- one key idea is to trade my QN for white's QB (which plays a key role in his K-side attack, usually by sacrificing itself for the pawn on h3). Both players have to know theory as it's a minefield. Same goes for so many other KID lines. General understanding only takes you so far.

The problem with the QGD systems is they tend towards passivity and the emphasis is more on nuanced positional play in dry positions and endgame technique. All the exciting lines for black -- KID, semi-slav, Grunfeld, Benoni, Benko gambit -- come with risk and lack of book knowledge can be fatal.

[Jonathan Bryant]

[Even at the sub-180 level, players come prepared for the KID. They may play the Bayonet attack (9.b4) or 9.Ne1 followed by 10.a4 ... Both players have to know theory as it's a minefield

... lack of book knowledge can be fatal.

The reality is rather different.

Last autumn I downloaded all the games that I could get my hands on from the e2-e4 and Hampstead websites. That gave me an e2e4 database of 5283 games played between 03.06 and 10.13 and a Hampstead database of 1330 games played between 09.12 and 08.13

Looking at those games tonight I see that only 19 played in e2e4 events reached your starting point of White’s 9th move. Only 1 (one) at Hampstead reached this position. Only one guy (an 1800s fellow playing in a Major) reached the position more than once as Black.

The theory isn’t a minefield for amateur players. It’s a mirage.


(Black has a small plus score from those 20 games, btw)

[Roger de Coverly]

The theory isn’t a minefield for amateur players. It’s a mirage.

An increasing number of players are trying the annoying h3 line instead of Be2. How best to meet this isn't entirely obvious. Is it a subtle refinement on the system used by Petrosian, so if you play e5, they will play d5 immediately? Is the idea to castle queen-side and hack you up with g4? Or is more positional, they are still intending g4, but only to discourage .. f5?


[FEN "rnbq1rk1/ppp1ppbp/3p1np1/8/2PPP3/2N2N1P/PP3PP1/R1BQKB1R b KQ - 0 6"]

[Arshad Ali]

An increasing number of players are trying the annoying h3 line instead of Be2. How best to meet this isn't entirely obvious. Is it a subtle refinement on the system used by Petrosian, so if you play e5, they will play d5 immediately? Is the idea to castle queen-side and hack you up with g4? Or is more positional, they are still intending g4, but only to discourage .. f5?

Beat the KID by Jan Marcos gives this as one of its 3 recommended lines (I think, speaking from memory). Also I think there's some DVD devoted to this. As white I often have to contend with ... Nbd7 lines and (infrequently) ... Na6 lines. Other than that it's the usual ... Nc6 followed by ... e5 and then ...f5 a couple of moves later.

If U180s are deviating earlier than this and playing offbeat or improvised lines, then maybe they're not what they used to be 20 years back ....

[Roger de Coverly]

If U180s are deviating earlier than this and playing offbeat or improvised lines, then maybe they're not what they used to be 20 years back ....

If you are prepared to do your own research, you don't need to rely on the opinion of authors, some of whom are not much better than top or reasonable amateurs. Particularly when you use a variation tree, it becomes obvious that if faced with an unfamiliar position in practice, many more moves have been played or are playable than the simplified narrative of a "Winning with the .." book would suggest.

You certainly should gain a few grading points by being fire proof in the opening, but it's still easy enough to shed half and whole points by not being able to put your opponent away.

[Arshad Ali]

If U180s are deviating earlier than this and playing offbeat or improvised lines, then maybe they're not what they used to be 20 years back ....

If you are prepared to do your own research, you don't need to rely on the opinion of authors, some of whom are not much better than top or reasonable amateurs. Particularly when you use a variation tree, it becomes obvious that if faced with an unfamiliar position in practice, many more moves have been played or are playable than the simplified narrative of a "Winning with the .." book would suggest.

You certainly should gain a few grading points by being fire proof in the opening, but it's still easy enough to shed half and whole points by not being able to put your opponent away.

Opinions vary. It depends what level you're playing at. I remember what Nunn said in his 2nd edition to Beating the Sicilian: that the offbeat lines he recommended in the 1st edition were adopted by GMs and it then became clear why they were offbeat when they got trounced by their GM opponents. But these lines may well work at lower levels. And if the writers of books are FMs like Graham Burgess, then again what you say is correct. But if the writers are players with FIDE ratings >2600 and they are producing monographs for the likes of publishers like Quality Chess and Chess Stars and they are writing on openings like the KID, Sicilian Najdorf, and Semi-Slav, which abound in forced lines and only moves, then I do think acquaintance with "theory" is tremendously helpful. Or at least, I've found it so. Granted, it's not so essential in less sharp openings.