Funny that so many mentions Avrukh, I don't really see the appeal of the system he advocates. Not very critical imo, but it'll need less updating - which is a trap many d4-repertoire books fall into. Spending most of their energy on the different Indians and then giving something 'simple' vs the Dutch before sending in the manuscript.

Btw, on the Iljin, it's main GM practitioner Simon Williams has a 6 hour dvd on it and if you want a second opinion at times, then Pinski's book on it could be worth having too.

The Dutch Stonewall book published by gambit a few years ago, 2009. It was written by sverre johansson, IM Ivar Bern, GM Adgestein. I just love the fact that the dutch stonewall doesn't have to be played like an idiot with a Knife charging a pill box. Black can play on the queenside and in the center. The book lucidly demonstrates many plans in every variation that will pose your opponent serious problems.

IM Ivar Bern is a correspondence GM and he plays the stonewall dutch, thus it is tested at the highest levels with on going computer analysis.

up and comer wrote on 12/31/11 at 06:15:18:


To play it yourself, you could begin with McDonald's Starting Out book and go on to for example Kindermann's book if you want to play the Leningrad.

But it's not an opening you read about and then know. The most important is playing it a lot and analyse where and why things went wrong. As black you can expect about 60% d4+g3 systems, the tricky thing is knowing what to do against the other 40% which ranges from the solid but toothless all the way to very wild gambits.

The bonus is that if you play it consistently with black, you'll end up with a large armoury of ideas to test when facing it with white.

TN wrote on 12/31/11 at 09:46:16:




Well, for the White side, there should soon be Wojo's Weapon vol. 3, I think.

For the Black side, it depends on what line you are thinking of. Kindermann and MacDonald has published on the Leningrad. Sverre Johnsen and Ivar Bern wrote a nice book in Win with the Stonewall Dutch. There are many more of course, just the examples that came to my mind.

To play against it, and to play it yourself? I have no book knowledge on it, but have been seeing it a lot in tournaments. I want to know it completely and understand how I should play and the plans I need to use from both sides.