Beat the Dutch Defense

"A Killer Weapon Against the Dutch Defense"

Once upon a time in Chicago...

My meeting with the Staunton Gambit was very amazing – I remember one of the famous games of Ed Lasker – Thomas 1912, London Blitz, when I was young and "green" in 1994. It happened that my results against the Dutch Defense were really good – it did not matter which variation Black chose, the Stonewall or Leningrad or even the Ilyin-Zhenevsky – I was really happy about the positions and the results.

However in 2015 in the fifth round of a very strong open tournament in Chicago my opponent was the very talented Ukrainian GM Ilya Nyzhnyk. I was playing as Black and was thinking which opening to choose and decided to play the Dutch Defense. So the game started 1. d4 f5 2. e4 – Ilya was playing very fast – 2... fxe4 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5. I remembered from my experience that only 4... Nc6 gave chances to have positions with counterplay and decided to use it: 4... Nc6 5. d5 Ne5. Here Ilya quickly played 6. Qe2 instead of the more common move from my memory 6. Qd4. I started to think – my first thought was that Black’s position looked very dangerous! White has easy ideas and I needed to play very carefully. I spent around 40 minutes to find the idea of 6... Nf7 7. Bxf6 exf6 8. Nxe4 Qe7 9. d6 Qe6 and was very happy that I did not lose in the opening. After that game I was really impressed with this idea and started to use it and to analyze it more deeply. In 2017 I faced Erwin L'Ami in Wijk aan Zee, and after 1.d4 f5 I decided to use this idea again after which I was very happy. After the opening, at around move 10, I was ahead by about 40 minutes. Such a development of the game against a strong GM is very good as you can imagine. 

I am very happy to be in contact with Jan Boekelman who has done a lot of work on this interesting and useful book. It is an honor to be a part of it. I hope his ideas will help you achieve good results against the Dutch Defense. I can highly recommend using this system at any time control. 

Dear friends, I wish you good luck!
GM Vladimir Dobrov
April 202