To be fair to Siegbert, he did come up with a study showing the right way to defend was with the bishop in front of the pawns not behind.Paul Cooksey wrote: I understood the rule of thumb to be that connected pawns needed to be moderately well advanced for black to have difficulty holding. In my defence so did Tarrasch when I looked it up later....
I'm also, of course, astonished that the position after the queen swap isn't a draw.
Yes, all know theory. Not just in terms of the moves but in terms of the principles of the Classical Dutch too. 7 ... a5 is one of the standard ideas Black has (the others being 7 ... Qe8 and 7 ... Ne4).Austin Elliott wrote: Do I gather from what Simon Williams and others have posted that Gordon-Harvey is all GM opening prep?
Up to ... fxe4 has all been played before. Probably further.
The thing is, when you play Black in the Dutch you really want to be aiming to get ... e5 in when you can. Especially so when White has played e2-e4. With the White queen on c2 instead of d3 the line works fine for Black. With the a-pawn back on a7 and the White rook on f1, the line works fine for Black. It's just unfortunate that in this specific position Black's 'standard plan' doesn't work.
I suppose the fact that Black is doing everything he should be going in the Classical Dutch is one of the main reasons why this - frankly not too difficult to spot once you know it's there - line was overlooked for so long. (Another is probably that Qc2 feels a bunch more natural than Qd3).
Don't forget the proper Dutch expert played 7 ... a5 countless times without stumbling into this line.
