Thanks for answering my question, I had 2 more, what does he recommend vs the benoni and benko (or does he play some anti-benoni) and for those who get the video course, is it recommended?

Mtal wrote on 04/03/20 at 20:29:27:


The twist in the Catalan Lines is that the chosen move-order avoids Bb4 check which can be quite annoying. The Slav section is quite nuanced and well done, involving delaying 0-0 in favour of Qb3 in some lines, etc etc again precise move-order is important here and he guides the reader/viewer in great detail. Long story short, I found no easy equality for Black in the Slav against the suggested lines in KIS - 1.d4.

Having said all that, and even though you did not ask this question, the Book/Chessable repertoire does have a glaring weak spot, and its the following line which is just dead equality everywhere:

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3 c5 4.Bg2 cxd4 5.0-0 Bd7!?= Essentially black is delaying Nc6 so as to meet Nxd4 with e5 denying White the desirable option of Nxc6. The problem for White is that he doesn't really have any convincing waiting moves, although Sielecki makes a valiant effort to show a nibble the positions are just comfortably equal.[5...e6= It should be noted that this position can also be reached by a number of move-orders.]

Final observation, there is no free lunch, if you are essentially going to play 1.d4 2.Nf3 3.g3 against everything you have to accept that against certain systems you will not pose many problems, that's the trade off. Overall though I would say that Keep it Simple 1.d4 does pose a lot of problems for Black in many different systems and contains lots of very interesting novelties and ideas. I guess what I'm saying is just buy the book/course it's one of the most comprehensive one stop Repertoires out there and is sure to repay study with many easy points.

grandpatzer wrote on 12/18/19 at 19:28:31:


The "simple" refers to the move order 1 d4 2 Nf3 3 g3 4 Bg2 5 0-0 6 c4 which is the preferred move order in this repertoire (whenever it makes sense). The idea is to reduce the number of systems you have to know by avoiding all systems with an early dxc4 by Black.

I didn't pay attention to Kindle books before, because I would rather have a different e-book format, if not a physical book. So I was a little surprised that the Kindle preview has more content to view than the "official" preview from New in Chess.

https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Simple-1-d4-Straightforward-Repertoire/dp/9056918672...

versus

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9084.pdf

https://www.debestezet.nl/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=4339

BeeCaves wrote on 06/27/19 at 20:36:08:

Maybe ...f5 is more appropriate when Black has kept his light-squared bishop, or as a counter specifically to f2-f4 with White's rook still on f1, I'm not sure. I have tried all the decent lines for White here: 6.Bb5+, 6.Bc4, 6.Be2 (with both Nd2 and allowing ...Bxf3 after 6...Bg4) and inserting h3 to avoid ...Bg4 altogether if the move order allows it. So it's a bit hard to keep all the possibilites apart.

There's really just one guy who plays this against me all the time in blitz and rapid. But he's an IM, a blitz expert and something of an angstgegner, so it may not be just the opening that is at fault for my abysmal results...

I looked at Sielecki's lines now. They look decent enough, but they end too early to my mind. I could easily see myself finding all his moves at the board and still getting in trouble a few more moves down the line. So further analysis is needed.

I should have that NIC Yearbook somewhere. There's also a Schmid Benoni game with three test questions along the way in Dvoretsky's Strategic Play - the chapter is called 'Clash of Plans' and the game is Browne - Gheorghiu, London 1980.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1462512

There White played with Be2, but with an unusual early Nd2 move order that avoids ...Bg4. Maybe Black could have tried ...e6 against it, but instead he played for ...b5 really slowly with ...Na6-c7, ...b6, ...Ba6, ...Rb8 and eventually ...a6. But Black still won in the end! This is a tricky opening for both sides to handle.

A bit of a follow-up:  apparently the article I was imperfectly remembering is one by Rustem Dautov back in 2001.  Regarding this game (unlike the other ways of playing by Black which he addressed) he didn't indicate a way for White to be better.  "Socko's plan with Bf4-g3 was too simplistic; White should look for an improvement."
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1168497

kylemeister wrote on 06/27/19 at 16:48:43:


The weird thing with 6.Bc4 is it seems to make one of Black's other plans stronger: ...Bg4 to get rid of a minor piece, followed by ...Nbd7, ...a6 and usually ...Ne8-c7, playing for the ...b5 break but also sometimes ...f5.

I have struggled with White against that plan even in its most common version (with White playing Be2), and it looks like White will lose time compared to that with Bc4 and Qxf3 because he probably doesn't want to allow ...Ne5xc4. So I'm skeptical. But I will take a look at what Sielecki has to say about 6.Bc4.

ErictheRed wrote on 06/25/19 at 15:58:11:


Grunfeld is met by 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.g3 Bg7 4.Bg2 0-0 5.0-0 d5 6.c4 with typical play for this line.

King's Indian is (after the above moves) 5...d6 6.b3.

Benoni and Benko are avoided, instead he goes into commonly recommended anti-Indian systems against them, but with his own twist.

Benoni is met by 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 c5 3.d5 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.e4 d6 and now he recommends the new 6.Bc4!? with the idea of discouraging ...e6

Benko is met by 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 c5 3.d5 b5 4.c3!? Instead of the usual 4.Bg5, although Bg5 usually follows at some stage.

Thanks everyone for advising me on how Chessable works. So I took the plunge and bought it! For an existing 1.d4 2.Nf3 player this repertoire is potentially of great value to me. Sure, I would prefer a paper book to the MoveTrainer, but as I couldn’t wait for it to be printed (November, I think) I decided to try out Chessable. I don’t regret my purchase.

If anyone wants to know what he recommends against any particular variation then please ask away. I won’t give any analysis away but will share the main repertoire choice.

As far as ‘Keep it Simple’ goes, this book is very different from the 1.e4 book. That one gave clear pawn structures and plans against each black response. 1.d4 is quite the opposite - though our initial moves are the same 1.d4, 2.Nf3 3.g3 etc there are transpositions into other openings everywhere. Clear plans are often sidelined in cases where Black sharpens the play at the outset, resulting in often obscure and non-typical pawn structures that are uncommon (in my experience) for a traditional 1.d4 player. It’s very much an ‘Avrukh-lite’ repertoire; there’s a huge amount of material to work through.

If you are attached to your d-pawn and like a typical presence in the centre with the pawn occupying d4 or d5 you will find a lot of the recommendations go against the grain. The pawn will often be exchanged off by a ...c5 from Black, often with your pawns still on c2 and e2, so don’t think it’s just an English. Sometimes with dxc5 from White, sometimes allowing ...cxd4 into Reversed Grunfeld setups. These positions are very unique to this repertoire and make full use of the specific delayed c4 move order Sielecki recommends. That in mind, there’s a decent case for entering the repertoire via 1.Nf3, 2.g3, 3.Bg2 and only deciding to play d4 in some cases, or even go into a Symmetrical English if you prefer that to the recommended positions where your d-pawn gets exchanged off so early.

It’s a good repertoire and I look forward to trying it out more online and eventually over the board. I can’t wait for the book to be published though as I find this way of absorbing the information much easier. In the meantime I’ll stick the rep into my own ChessBase files as I learn it.

Stigma wrote on 06/14/19 at 09:24:43:


I fully agree. You volunteer for courses you are interested in and in my experience most issues that are raised will be  addressed during beta testing. So a >= 4 star rating should not be a surprise. But even so one of my reviews was pretty negative about the course it discussed and I also gave only one 5 star rating so far.

One additional point is that there are no guidelines I know of that tell you how to decide whether a course deserves a 1-, 2-, 3-, 4- or 5-star rating. I believe most reviewers tend to be a little bit too generous when in doubt.

My suggestion is to look at the pro and con sections most reviews contain and check other reviews by the same reviewer. Then you get a better idea of how strict or generous the given reviewer is.

winawer77 wrote on 06/14/19 at 12:07:39:


If you mean that if they give you a .pgn or .cbv download file, no, you have to move pieces on your own each line with its programme.

I believe that there is tree section where you can look at what the lines are as an overwiew. But this is not the same as when you going through lines like in ChessBase where you scroll your cursor to get through the moves.

I'm not so familiar with Chessable either, but this will be published in book format later this year (I assume by New in Chess) so you can have a standard paper book with this format if you can wait.

I’m very interested in this repertoire as it’s a perfect way of avoiding Benko/Benoni/Grünfeld (among other things) without having to resort to d-pawn specials all the time. This repertoire could solve many problems for me before I  just switch to 1.c4 entirely.

However, I’ve never used Chessable, and I’ve had some difficulty in finding out what it’s like. Is everything done through the MoveTrainer program, or is there any traditional analysis like you would expect in ChessPub, for example? Is there a book/index to search for a specific variation, for example?

Apologies if these questions are a little off-topic, but the website (at least to me) doesn’t make it as clear as I apparently need it to be.

Thanks Stigma, that is very enlightening. It is only sensible to want to review things where you have an interest/ background expertise.

Being a 1 Nf3 or 1 d4 player I'm very interested in this book (in the paper format) so I'm keeping an open mind on this new work by Sielecki....Not being a 1e4 player I didn't buy Keep It Simple 1 e4 but it did win book of the year on this site and from all accounts it is excellent.

No reason at this stage to suspect this new title won't be of similar quality.

proustiskeen wrote on 06/13/19 at 02:11:53:


As far as reviews go, it means that every new book immediately has tens of enormously glowing reviews that are for the most part totally uncritical.

Personally I find that this makes me less likely, not more likely, to buy something...

proustiskeen wrote on 06/13/19 at 02:11:53:

I assumed it was a book like the previous one, but apparently not (yet)

Seeley wrote on 06/13/19 at 00:48:30:


I find that odd. Maybe publishers do it differently. Quality Chess if I understand correctly get their books basically in Glasgow and chess shops at around same time of their scheduled release date. So public gets books same time as publisher gets it.

I never knew that New in Chess got books earlier than public though.

In that case, why not send them immediately to chess shops instead of waiting to November ¿ 

CanadianClub wrote on 06/12/19 at 15:17:15:


How is possible if the paper book is not out until November ¿

katar wrote on 06/10/19 at 17:22:27:


I guess it's kind of the middle road between a hardcore full blown mainline repertoire and a narrow 'system' repertoire like the London? If I understand correctly the goal is to provide a repertoire he would also recommend for his students, improving players. A repertoire that you can play at any level and one you can always expand with other lines.

It looks like his e4 repertoire has less lines so maybe is more simple. On the other hand, in this repertoire he goes way more deeper in lines to explain middle game ideas.

katar wrote on 06/10/19 at 17:22:27:


I think the "Simple" in Sielecki's books needs to be understood as meaning that you should be able to play the openings even if you forget most of the theory and only remember the general ideas, i.e. there tend to be very fewer forcing or very sharp variations.

The downside is of course that play is sometimes less principled, or on the black side, that you won't fully equalize.

Leon_Trotsky wrote on 06/08/19 at 00:52:04:

It is almost 30 hours of video, which is more like 6 DVDs. And on chessable, you can click on a line you're interested in and it will jump to the right place in the video, that's awesome!

https://www.chess.com/blog/HanSchut/first-look-keep-it-simple-1-d4-by-im-christo...

kylemeister wrote on 06/07/19 at 19:38:54:


The reviewer is 15 years old ¿

MW wrote on 06/07/19 at 19:51:37:


Good day, fellow IT moron  . I can confirm that it is fairly easy to use. You just follow moves given in each line and play them back. You have to actually move pieces though, like when playing online blitz instead of rolling cursor like ChessBase.

MW wrote on 06/07/19 at 19:51:37:


If I see correctly, it is 25USD (24,99USD which is essentially 25USD but you know).

It say with added video is 99,98USD. I think that that is pretty damn expensive, but that is just me. Personally I think that electronic should cost less than 20€ since paper book you actually can hold in your hand.

Compared with ChessBase DWD with files around same price.

For Amazon, I found: https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Simple-1-d4-Straightforward-Repertoire/dp/9056918672

Shows basically 30USD. So Chessable is 5USD less.

Personally with paper book only 5 USD more than Chessable at that price, I would prefer just get paper book. But if you really prefer electronic you could choose Chessable version.

MW wrote on 06/07/19 at 21:30:04:


Yes. They have a number of free courses, so you can test it out with those before paying for anything.

MW wrote on 06/07/19 at 19:51:37:


It's a website. It will work on anything that runs a web browser. Laptop, Android, tablet, desktop machine...

Quote:


The video part of the course adapts its resolution to your connection.

A minor remark -- I noticed that a comment/review at Chessable by FM Ajay Karthikeyan includes this:  "After 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3 c5 this has proved to be the most critical approach against this universal setup from White 4.Bg2 cxd4 all this has been normal development and now comes the twist 5.O-O! I have never seen this idea in my entire chess career to be honest and this really surprised me and I got really attached to this idea."  I mentioned it in an earlier thread about this stuff, but 5. 0-0 appeared in Nunn's Chess Openings some twenty years ago (five years before Karthikeyan was born) where it was given as leading to an edge for White.

one of the main reasons i was sceptical of this move order was slav-type set ups from black. but chessexplained's descriptions of the arising positions from his youtube channel show that he's given this a fair bit of thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOhYkzJawKE

doefmat wrote on 05/12/19 at 17:29:55:

I watched some of his latest Geschwätzblitz/banter blitz and noticed him saying such things as:  the online version will come out first; I have finished writing but it still needs to be checked; the whole thing will be done in three months.

A bit funny:  in the banter blitz 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. g3 Bg7 4. Bg2 0-0 5. 0-0 d5 6. c4 occurred, at which point Sielecki commented, "I analyzed this during the past two weeks."  Then the opponent played the odd 6...e6.  "I didn't analyze that."

nocteus wrote on 05/12/19 at 10:19:45:

He just referred to 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. g3 c6.

Leon_Trotsky wrote on 05/11/19 at 20:37:15:


Nothing top secret. Go to Amazon, click on books, then advanced search. I search on keyword chess, and pub date after the current month. Or you can search on each publisher.  Hope this helps, and if anyone has an easier/different method, please share.

How do people keep finding these upcoming titles ¿ They never show up on the publisher websites...

If he recommends Catalán, the plan is simple but the theory is insane. Still looking forward to bok 

I now see from Amazon that "Keep It Simple 1.d4" book by Sielecki will follow his award-winning 1.e4 book. The book will focus on 1.d4 2.Nf3 3.g3 4.0-0 vs. most Black lines, with an eventual 6.c4 to follow, and focus on clear explanations of plans and strategies. I am definitely excited about this book. Publication date is 20 Nov. 2019, so it will be some time...