The K-mann wants to meet this with ...Nxd5 9.cxd5 Nd7! intending Nb6/f6.

If I was playing 7...Qe8, I might be more concerned about 8.Qb3 as in Jussupow-Kindermann, (p75-77) black was more or less forced to force a draw in 20 moves which might be fine when playing against Jussupow, but I can't find any advice from K-mann how to keep the fire going if you want to try for a win against a less illustrious opponent...

Well, any day seems a few months away, as 2005-05-01 should mean May 1st 2005.

http://www.niggemann.com/detail/buecher/7719.html

I'm not very fond of the 7...Qe8 systems in the L-grad, but I think Kindermann's book says a5 instead of Na6 is just necessary nowadays, so theory is progressing very rapidly in this system. Just a few years prior to the book, K-man made a dvd with Na6 as his chosen line...

I think Pinski also liked 7...Ne4. But to understand the advantage of Ne4 over Qe8 or a5, one must first know these variations it seems.

I checked what Khalifman had to say about 7...Ne4, and after 8.Qc2 Nxc3 9.Qxc3 Bf6 10.b4! he likes white. But 9...a5 as indicated by Williams (and not mentioned by Khalifman in 2001), seems better. 
It's similar to 7...a5 8.b3 Ne4 but then white can recapture more comfortably with 9.Bb2 Nxc3 10.Bc3 and here ...Bf6 has less bite than with the queen on c3.

This is at least one idea with Ne4 I think, feel free to point out other pros & cons! Just like HgMan I only dabble with the Iljin - but I play the Leningrad.

These stats sound fairly persuasive, but I've never put too much stock in them, especially in a line like the IZ.  Often times, even strong players with the Black pieces get all consumed with a swashbuckling attack on the kingside to the detriment of his/her own defense.  Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the statistics suggest a bloodbath.  I also suspect (without having checked) that these lines produce fewer draws on average than do other d4 openings.  I could be wrong--just a hunch.   

MNb's game several messages back is particularly instructive insofar as it preaches patience in Black's strike.  All this to say that the Classical is indeed an aggressive opening, but Black should exhibit some patience (though not passivity) in his/her play.

I'm sure there are some objective advantages to playing the Leningrad over the Classical Dutch (I dabble with both, but don't play either), but I am getting a little tired of the somewhat repetitive theme on many of these message boards that seem to insist on burying openings.  I would imagine a more useful, profitable, and enjoyable exertion of our energies would be to rehabilitate openings rather than condemn them out of hand based on what our databases tell us.  That's not to say that the Classical Dutch will refute 1 d4, but there must be innovations out there.

"There are lies, damn lies and statistics"

If the statistics should reveal anything worthwhile, one must study the material first and make some kind of preselection.

When you take an 2300 average as the only criteria, you get many games with white being clearly higher rated (more than 100 elo points). Especially in an impopular black opening with few GMs as black the average will be on white's side.

As an experiment I tried selecting only games where the same black player had at least 3 different games  (i.e. avoiding copies) in this 2300 average group:

this lead to: 

7...a5,    80 games, black scores 46%
7...Qe8  76 games, black scores 38%
7....Ne4 16 games, black scores 47%

As 7...Ne4 is a newish idea, it has seen less action, but 47% may not be too unrealistic - Williams alone scored 2½/4 with it.

There may be even better selection criteria than this of course, but at least it balances white's higher rating average (and first move advantage!) with a probably more informed 2nd player.

Though it's interesting that 7...Qe8 still did rather poorly...

Here's a new game/article on the Iljin with 7...Ne4:

http://hometown.aol.co.uk/drmjdonnelly/donnellycosham.htm?f=fs

Yes, sorry, forgot to state, of course I did mean the Leningrad dutch.

Fact is, that Vladimir Malanjuk won at the USSR-championship 1983 two impressing Leningrad games with 7...Qe8 against Beliavsky and Polugajevsky and chess history treats this as the birth hour of the Qe8-Leningrad.

The Leningrad Dutch scores in the main variation with 7...Qe8 the result of 53 % White vs. 47 % Black.

Compared with the Iljin-Ghenevsky that scores in the main variation 59 % White vs. 41 % Black, if White sets up with b3 then 61 % White vs. 39 % Black.