The Chessbug Opening Repertoire for Black

Part Two

Repertoire for Black 

We start with the hardest part of the repertoire – what to play as Black. While White can play almost everything and survive the opening, Black has a bigger chance of never making it to the middlegame (brrrr...). This problem is even more complicated if you want to play actively AND avoid mainlines. The demands we put to our repertoire seemed to be almost too much but we think that through the following process we arrived at a repertoire for Black that is quite sound and fulfills all of the guidelines we set for the Chessbug repertoire.

Against 1 d4 we contemplated playing the Albin Gambit (1 d4 d5 2 c4 e5) but then many times White diverts with 2 Nf3 or 2 g3 or even 2 Bg5. We might use the Albin for another repertoire sometime in the future but for the time being we left it and started thinking about a first move that would take White from well known territory right from the first move. We thought seriously about 1 d4 c5 which forces White to think whether he would like to take on c5, let Black take on d4 or advance with 2 d5. The last option is the best for White yet quite playable for Black.

However, if White starts with 1 c4 and Black answers with 1...c5 then we have a totally different position (because White did not play d2- d4 yet) which will demand a different opening against 1 c4. Moreover, if White plays 1 Nf3 then after 1...c5 most chances are that White will play 2 c4 or even 2 e4 and definitely not 2 d4.

* chessbug@chessbug.com

We were still contemplating 1 d4 c5 when we ran across Stefan Kinderman's Leningrad System: A Complete Weapon Against 1 d4: Black Repertoire for Tournament Players (Progress in Chess) . Here is a book by one of the greatest authorities  on chess openings that promises a complete repertoire against 1 d4 and it is a repertoire that starts with 1d4 f5 so the mainlines are deserted as fast as the first move – no option for White to be the first to divert. Not only that but this opening was frequently used by strong grandmasters, such as Malaniuk, Bareev, Hoang, Zhang, Onishchuk and Kinderman himself. Truly, at the very top it has been used rarely by Topalov and Kasparov and that's about it but as we said in the introduction - when you play against 2700+ grandmasters you can use another opening! For any club player or even between “normal” grandmasters the Dutch is perfectly playable.  Another plus of Kinderman's book is that the Dutch can also be played against 1 c4 and Kinderman covers this option so the book gives a repertoire against 1 d4 and 1 c4. You would expect that 1 Nf3 f5 would also be possible but the current estimation is that 1...f5 is not a good response to 1Nf3 (due to 2 d3 as you can see in the game Carlsen – Dolmatov, Moscow 2004 ) Still we found a way to incorporate the Dutch into our repertoire against 1 Nf3 when we decided on our response against 1 e4, as you can see below.

When thinking about a repertoire against 1 e4, we immediately disqualified 1...e5 and 1...c5 as too theory-heavy and giving White too many different options as early as the second move. Next we thought about 1...e6 but after 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 White can steer the game into positional channels that are not in the spirit of our repertoire. The Caro-Kann seemed too passive but 1...d5 was a serious contender. We thought of recommending Andrew Martin's excellent DVD which we still recommend, in general, but for the purposes of this repertoire we chose something that brings positions that are somewhat similar to the Leningrad Dutch and can sometimes even transpose to the Dutch – Tiger's Modern. Tiger's Modern is named after the Swedish grandmaster Tiger Hillarp Persson and is based on the moves 1 e4 d6 2 d4 g6 3 Nc3 Bg7 4 f4 a6!?. We know this seems rather unhealthy but it was played as early as the ninety sixties by Ivkov and Ujtelky and later used by Seirawan, Speelman and Gurevich. The main theoretical contributor is, however, Persson in his book Tiger's Modern.  Like the Dutch, this opening is not the suitable for Super GMs but in Persson's book you can find games by many grandmasters, such as Gurevich, Speelman, Ponomariov, Larsen and Chernin, alongside many of Grandmaster Persson's own games, so the opening is clearly playable in the amateur level. Moreover, Tiger's Modern does not give White an option to stir towards a positional or “dry” positions and the games are unbalanced and entertaining. Persson's style is another argument in favor of this book – Persson is funny, original, bold and terrifically enthusiastic about his opening. The downside of the book is that sometimes, especially when White chooses the aggressive lines you may get crashed without making any clear mistake but you will most likely find new ideas instead of any idea that does not work and in anyway, as Persson puts it, you will be “thrilled”.

Another advantage in playing 1...d6 against 1e4 is that if White starts with 1 Nf3 then you can play 1...d6 and now if White answers with 2 e4 then you are in the Modern and if White plays 2 d4 or 2 c4 then you can answer with 2...f5 and be in the Dutch again – one less opening to learn and more time to devote to other aspects of chess.

The last stage in building our repertoire was to find a book with advice against any of the openings other than the most popular four (1 e4, 1 d4, 1 c4, 1 Nf3) One option was Watson and Schiller's Big Book of Busts but this book is rather old (1994) and rather expensive to put your hands on today. A much newer book on the market is Palliser's Beating Unusual Chess Openings: Dealing With the English, Reti, King's Indian Attack and Other Annoying Systems (Everyman Chess). In this book we don't care about parts 1 and 3 that deal with answers to 1 c4 and 1 Nf3 respectively but part 2 is still a quite economic way to deal with 1 b3, 1 b4, 1 Nc3, 1 f4, 1 g3 and 1 g4. We still have not fully assessed the book but Palliser is a solid chess writer so, most likely, it is not too bad. You are invited to follow this column and discover how Palliser's advices work in practice. We are, in any case, positively impressed by the fact that for every opening Palliser gives two optional answers , which gives you the ability to choose between the “correct” answer and trying to surprise the opponent who tries to surprise you!

To sum up, here is the basis for the suggested repertoire for Black: 1 e4 d6, 1 d4 f5, 1 c4 f5, 1 Nf3 d6. Our next column will cover the repertoire suggestion for White. Until then you may purchase (or borrow, or steal) the first two books and start experimenting with the Dutch and the Modern. We will part from you with the words of Tiger Persson, “happy hunting”.

Written by Alex Furman and Moshe Rachmuth