Winning With the Dutch - Intermediate - The Macmillan Chess Library

185 Pages. Some light age tanning to top page edges and the tops of many pages. Welcome to the very special world of the Dutch Defence! This most versatile of defences to 1 d4 boasts several positive features: it is forcing (White cannot prevent you playing your defence, as is the case with, say, the Nimzo-Indian); it rules out radical strategic simplification (as occurs, for example, in the Queen's Gambit Declined when White plays the Exchange Variation); and it does not permit early major material simplification (which happens in standard lines of the popular King's Indian and Grunfeld Defences). So how on earth is it that even now the Dutch Defence is something of a secret? The reason has its origin in the nineteenth century, when the massively influential world champion Wilhelm Steinitz (the founder of modern chess) dogmatically dismissed the Dutch after a couple of crushing victories over Zukertort in the 1872 title match. His pedagogical pre-eminence was such as to eclipse the fact, for example, that the no less legendary Paul Morphy had regularly used the Dutch with success. The result was that the defence went under a cloud for generations. The process of rehabilitation began in the 1920s, spearheaded by World Champions Alekhine and Botvinnik, and gradually continued until the point was reached in the 1951 World Championship match where it was employed by both players. Despite this zenith, the Dutch was subsequently once again overshadowed throughout the sixties and seventies, this time by exciting developments in the other major defences. Now at long last it seems that the Dutch's time has come as more and more top players have become aware of its creative and combative potential. The resurgence of interest during the eighties has sown a seed which will surely develop as we go into the last decade of the twentieth century. This book summarizes the current state of all the major variations of the Dutch Defence and, in addition to its purely didactic aims, is intended to provide a useful and reliable basis for competitive preparation right across the spectrum from club to international level. Contents in 16 Chapters: Leningrad Main Line: 7 … c6, Leningrad Main Line 7…. ttJc6, Leningrad Main Line 7…We8, Leningrad Miscellaneous Systems, Hort-Antoshin Variation, Staunton Gambit: 2 e4, The Queen Bishop Attack: 2 Jtg5, The Queen Knight Attack: 2 ttJc3, 2 ttJf3 and Others, The Classical Variation, The Dutch Indian, Classical System: Auxiliary Variations, Alekhine's Variation: 6 . ttJe4, Ilyin-Zhenevsky System, Classical Stonewall, and Stonewall with . ~d6.