Quote:


Thank you, GM Semkov, for your attendance here and also for your very interesting book on the Queen's Gambit Accepted, which I have been reading.  I don't wish to tax your time, but I wonder if you would be willing to answer some questions about some of the ideas given in this book.  If so, I will post in another thread.

Hi
I have a questions to Catlan-experts.

In the position arising after:
1.) d4 d5 2.)c4 e6 3.) Nf3 Nf6 4.)g3 Be7 5.)Bg2 0-0       6.)0-0 c5

Question1:
Do you favour 7.)cxd5 intending intending to enter the Tarrasch or 7.)dxc4 with Qc2 ideas? 

Qustion2: 
Would it make a diffrence if black plays 5.)...c5 instead of 0-0?

???  ???  ???

thx for help

You are right. However I guess a convinced Tarrasch player would play 3...c5

Well, from the black side, a tarrasch adherent would have a problem after 3....Nf6 4.Nc3

It is true, we are out of the catalan but also out of the tarrasch as 4....c5 would be a bad move (cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5!) with a clear advantage for white.

Somehow funny, isn`t it?

I am consedering to play the tarrasch with black. Therefore I started to study this defence a little bit. And so far, I have problems to understand one line, which I think fit in this discussion. Above all because I think the black osition is quite bad.

Well, this line is:

1. d4 d5  2.c4 e6  3.Nf3 c5 4.Bg5 Be7 5.Bxe7 Nxe7 6.dxc5

if white would play in the 3. move Nc3 instead of Nf3 (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.Bg5 Be7 5.Bxe7 Nxe7 6.dxc5) black can play 6....d4! and black have no problems.

But in the 3.Nf3 line 6....d4 does not work for black and so he has isolated d-pawn position without active peaces.

Keihack mentioned in his book "Die Tarrasch-Verteidigung" that black probably should try f6 in the fourth move. But to me this move looks to artifical.

I am wondering, now, is 3.Nf3/ 4.Bg5 a easy way for white to get a small but solid plus with (much less complications than in the mainlines) or does black have a better variation?

Hi,

I believe the review you are referring to is a John Watson review which can be found at the JeremySilman.com website

"
http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_jw/jw_meeting_1_d4.html
"

Carsten Hansen have the same comment in his April 2002 review of the book ("Meeting 1.d4" by Agaard & Lund).

The review is possible to download as a  pdf-document from Chesscafe archives.

"
http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm#Checkpoint
"

On page 11 (in the pdf-document) Hansen listed some possible deviations 

1.d4 d5 2.d4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.g3 Nf6 5.Bg2 Be7 6.0-0 0-0

a/  7. b3 
b/  7.cxd5 exd5 and then a follow up without Nc3 but instead with Nbd2
and finally 
c/ 7.dxc5 Bxc5 8.Bg5. "This has been tried by amongst others Romanishin, and Black has scored miserably against it  (or, on my base, not scored at all!)". 


Cheers / Anders 
 

   The reason i ask is that i read a review of a tarrash book (meeting d4) . The reviewer said the following

"One slip is that the Catalan is given as transposing to a Tarrasch, but unfortunately several of White's legitimate chances to deviate are not considered"

     I am curious as to what these lines are.
  I am soon to be up against a tarrash expert who i feel would not be so happy if i could steer the game elsewhere.

Why avoid the Tarrasch when you play the Catalan?  They kind of go together.  I am aware of ideas of delaying Nc3 in order to get modified form of the Tarrasch, and I think there is a line where white avoids exchanging on d5, but I am not sure about this.  If you have not studied the Tarrasch, you should learn it.  Especially if you play the Catalan!

And why read Schiller, when there are other good books out there!?  ("Other" not meant to imply Schiller's book is good, though I admit I have not seen it.)  For one, there are both of Raetsky and Chetverik's books (Die Katalanisch Eroffnung {Kania; spelling might be off} and The Catalan {Everyman}).  Also there is the older reference books Neishtadt's Play the Catalan Vol. 1 and 2, which are very thorough.  Also, Dunnington's book might be a good introduction.

As for the Tarrasch, there is the thorough work from Kania (Die Tarrasch Eroffnung, I think), and Khalifman's Opening According to Kramnik, is worth a look.  I remember seeing an interesting article by Glenn Flear in the New In Chess yearbooks recently.  Sometimes I think is difficult pick up many of the move order subtleties of this opening, since the information seems rather scattered (and I don't read German!).  It simply pays to understand the isolated and hanging pawn middlegames well.  It's an opening worth studying!