I have bought both his books and find that they are really excellent. His suggestions are nice and quite aggressive IMO. He suggests 1. d4 e6 2. e4 but doesn't mention a French line that would suit the rest of the repertoire. Do you have any suggestions here? I could imagine that 3. Sd2 would be the logical choice but I'm no expert in the French defence. It is also tempting just to play 2. c4 and go for a quick g3 against the Dutch defence which Avrukh recommends in his repertoire books.

Michael Wilde wrote on 11/29/12 at 08:30:10:

I recently made a study of this and published an article upon it on my blog: http://schaken-brabo.blogspot.com/2013/03/lars-schandorff.html

brabo wrote on 10/08/12 at 08:13:20:


As far as I can tell (I play the dutch but usually 2 ... g6 after 2.Bg5, so I do not have any experience with 2...h6) 

A) is treated at least adequately (I did not check too closely)

B) is the weakest point in the suggested repertoire. 8...Qf7 seems to be fine for Black. I also don't see the edge for White after the alternative suggestion 8.Be2. Since I do find the resulting positions difficult to evaluate, White may be better after all. But even if this is the case, advice as to how to play the resulting positions is sorely needed. (Speaking as someone who thinks about using either Schandorff's 2 volumes or Watson's d4 repertoire as a starting point for trying out 1.d4 after decades of 1.e4)
 
C) is treated well. I would not want to try 4...Rh7 against somebody having read this book. 

barnaby wrote on 10/07/12 at 19:04:30:

This thread possible has to be moved to the Dutch section.

A) I remember in the old book of Larry Christiansen en Jeremy Silman 4...Bg7 was advocated (1989) Around 2000 the more or less refutation of that idea became spread and the focus shifted to B.
B) As far as I understood 4...Nf6 is still fully playable. 5 e5 e6 6 exf6 Qxf6 7 Bg3 f4 8 Qh5 Qf7 has been tested by myself in some blitzgames with good results . It is probably also the reason why I never made a serious indepth analysis of Qf7.
C) 4...Rh7 was recommended in http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Weapons-Dutch-Dazzle-Opponents/dp/1857446240
I don't know what todays status is of this special line. Is this discussed in Lars Schandorffs book?

One potential issues in his Dutch line v. 2. ... h6 (p. 186 Gm 70 Prie-Bolding).

1. d4 f5  2. Bg5 h6  3. Bh4 g5  4. e4! (exclam his) Bg7 (but here black more often plays ...Nf6, which he gives in notes and might be the better move for black here.

after 4. ...Nf6 Schandorff offers 5 e5 e6 6 exf6 Qxf6 7 Bg3 f4 8 Qh5 Kd8 .... but here I think Black can instead and usually plays 8 ...Qf7 and forces the trade of Queens and an endgame which is pretty close to equal.

Here is his quote after move 5. e5 "To me, this seems bad for black. Okay, it is just a feeling, but let's see if we can back it up with some analysis.  Play might continue: 5. ... e6 6 exf6 Qxf6 7 Bg3 f4 8 Qh5 Kd8 ...."  He then adds a bunch more analysis after this (7 more moves) and proclaims "This indeed looks excellent for white."  He does not mention move 8. ... Qf7 as possibility for black.

When I played the Dutch, Bg5 was never a problem becouse of g6.
The lines that made me ditch the Dutch after playing it over a decade was completly other lines.

I do not have Schandorff book so I dont know exactly how he treats g6 but the last book I read from whites point of view in the Dutch that recommended Bg5 (Killer chess opening repertour 2nd edition) did not mention an obious counter attacking improvment (mentioned in the old Starting out Dutch defence) over a black Topalov game when black gets a slight intiative and engines slightly favor black!

I've had the book for close to a fortnight and am mildly disappointed in it and agree it is not up to the usual standards QC seems to be hitting.  One of my points of concern are the lines given v. the Dutch defense, which upon deeper review, do not seem to provide white the advantage claimed in the text.

Also not sure given the actual physical size of these two efforts why they could not have been released in a single tome.

Overall, I sense a sharp decline in the materials being offered lately by QC and more hit-and-miss as they seem to be increasing the number of releases per year.

Some parts of the book aren't of the quality we've got used from his Caro book, e.g. in the Gruenfeld after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Qb3 dc4 6.Qxc4 0-0 7.e4 a6 8.Be2 b5 9.Qb3 c5 10.dc5 Bb7 11.e5 Nfd7 12.Be3 Nxe5 13.Nxe5 Bxe5, he gives 14.Rd1 with exclam mark (and which offers white very little after 14...Nd7 which he doesn't mention, and factly its quite unclear after both 15.Nd5 Qa5+ 16.Kf1 Re8 and 15.Bg4 e6 16.Bxe6 Bxg2), instead of the clearly superior 14.0-0, which does NOT equalize after 14...Nc6 15.Rfd1 Nd4, as he claims. It looks it was written in a hurry by just glancing at an engine's output.