Pardon my French
I never know where my logic leads me beforehand. But I reckon it as my duty to follow it where ever it goes. I put my opening study to halt a few months ago, once I noticed how weak my tactics really were. Since then I suffered a few ugly defeats, especially with black. Against the Leningrad Dutch and the Accelerated Dragon, you get often some more or less obscure gambits or variations designed to avoid the main lines. When you don't know it, it is easy to go astray. Since there are quite a lot of anti Leningrad and anti Sicilian variations, It would take an awful lot of time to protect myself against these lines.
Now my tactics are steadily improving, I wondered if I could find a somewhat easier set of defenses, which would take me less time to master. With the London system, I had only learned the first three moves before I dared to play it with confidence. I wondered if I couldn't find something like that with black.
I think I might have found something. I can play 1. ... e6 against everything. Which gives me the choice to play the French against the dynamic duo e4 d4. And if white deviates, I can change to the Classical Dutch defense.
I have played both defenses in the past. I abandoned the French since I always had the impression that I handed over the keys of my kings castle to my opponent and wished him good luck. But I found a book at Chessable about the "unexplored French" which remedies exactly this problem in a credible way.
I abandoned the Classical Dutch long ago, for no valid reason, it was just a bit boring the way I played it. The killer Dutch of GM Simon Williams remedies that.
I reckon I don't need too much time to renew my knowledge of these two defenses, so I'm going to give it a try.
What ever you want to play: play hundreds of blizgames with your opening, analyse the first moves of every game and write down the best lines
ReplyDeleteI hire a grandmaster for that
DeleteThe e6 approach was one I tried, via a recommendation by Nigel Davies on his DVD '1...e6, a solid repertoire'. A large part of the motivation for this was that it would reduce time spent, as dealing with a full-time job and chess improvement is difficult.
ReplyDeleteHe showed a combination of the French vs e4 and the Franco-Indian vs d4 ( 1.d4 e6 2. c4 Bb4+, as used by Paul Keres, and with Viacheslav Eingorn being a more current practitioner), but he did also mention that the Dutch was a good approach, as e6 reduced the options for White in the Dutch. If I am honest, I was not ready or experienced enough in chess for this, and although I picked up the French for some time, the d4 part of the repertoire did not work for me.
Now that I am playing OTB again, I know I will have to finalise a d4 response, although at my level I see mainly e4, or an occasional London/Colle/Zukertort system, and against those, I use the Dutch Stonewall ( ease of use and lack of time) which gives me a playable game.