sssthepro wrote on 08/31/08 at 13:36:49:


Of course there is no line that can deal with two such disparate systems -- that was my joke.  Against the Gruenfeld I usually rely on the Exchange Variation with Nf3 and Rb1, and I have had quite good success.  I think that in many ways that is White's most natural and thoroughgoing challenge to the Gruenfeld.  It does require a lot of preparation, however.  Also I am one of those who believes that the Gruenfeld is ultimately sound, so I would be surprised if anything in White's arsenal was super duper against it. 

The Stonewall Dutch is very much the opposite of chess as I understand it; I cannot conceive why anyone would play it, but at the same time, I am at a loss to know how to play against it.  I don't worry about the Iljin-Zhenevsky because hardly anyone plays it, and sensible, conservative play by White seems adequate for an enduring advantage.  At worst you wind up in a sort of anti-hedgehog, where the white e-pawn has been exchanged for Black's f-pawn, and Black has a knight on c7 defending his weak e6 pawn.  But in those positions I think that Black's supposed counterplay with Rb8 and b7-b5 is something of a pretense.  It seems to me that White is as likely to benefit from the opening up of the queenside as Black is.

The Leningrad is another puzzle for me.  I played it myself for quite a while, without ever really believing in it.  I am not sure how best to play against it.  It would probably be best just to follow Khalifman.

Basically I think that 1...f5 is a mistake.  The e-pawn is weak.  Proving that it is a mistake is difficult, however, and seems to require more understanding of the game than I have right now.

Markovich, I am not joking with you here. I really don't know what to play against the Grunfeld and Dutch and would like some help. If you have some good ideas, or some line that can deal with both systems, I would really appreciate it if you can share with me. If you are reluctant to share too much, some general ideas would be good enough for me and I can work from there.

And trandism, I will check out the Bd2 line. Thanks.

The joke is wearing thin, so I'll just leave it at that.  Thanks for playing the straight man for awhile.

My apologies for making fun of your topic.

As the expression goes, Markovich owes me a keyboard.

Hey, I am not being Gambit here. I really did see g4 ideas in the Dutch before. 

If you have a better idea what h3 is for, maybe you can enlighten me. I am getting baffled by all the weird (imo) move nowadays.

Sorry, Markovich, but maybe you can explain the use of the move h3? It seems useless other than stopping Bg4, which is not really threatened yet and seems to waste an important tempo in the opening. Another idea is g4, which seems absurd at the moment, but it could work in the Dutch set-ups when Black has weakened the kingside with f5 and White has castled kingside. However, g4 does not seem to work against the Grunfeld.

I play the Leningrad but i have a lot of problems facing this line :
1.d4 f5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bf4 ok white plays slowly but against a g6 set up, he can attack on the Queenside. i did not found a good antidote !

Against the Leningrad Dutch, you can read the following articles:
http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1204829323