3...Nf6 in the QGD is NOT Bad
A friend of mine, @pugetsound (Eddie Chang), shared with me a conversation that he took place in at his school's chess club. In it, he attempted to convince somebody that the Queen's Gambit Declined Gambit with 3...Nf6 was inferior.
"The QGD with 3...Nf6 is completely unplayable. After 4. cxd5 exd5 5. Bg5, White gets a good Carlsbad because Black cannot develop his light-squared bishop. The only playable line is to go ...Nh5, but that line is very passive. Black's attempts to show understanding with ...g6, ...Ng7, and ...Bf5 run into concrete problems. It is completely insane that so many people play 3...Nf6. The only people reason to play it is to spend eight tempi trying to look cool by placing the knight on d6 to make it seem like they have studied classic games. "
"3. Nc3 Nf6 is an inaccurate move order. Black can try 6...Bf5 7. Qf3 Bg6 8. Bxf6 Qxf6 9. Qxf6 gxf6, but as shown in the game Carlsen — Kramnik (Norway 2016), the resulting endgame is extremely unpleasant and practically unplayable..."
"... There is also 4...Nxd5 championed by World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, trying to play a Semi-Tarrasch, but this move order is not the best as after 5. e5 Nxc3 6. bxc3 c5, White does not have to transpose to the Semi-Tarrasch mainlines with 7. Nf3, but can instead play 7. Rb1!, preventing the simplifying ...Bb4+. One fresh idea in the game Karjakin — Kramnik (Berlin 2018) was 7. Rb1 Be7 8. Nf3 0-0 9. h4! and White won convincingly."
After Eddie shared this conversation with me, I retorted that in just this year itself, GM Levon Aronian was able to defeat World Champion Magnus Carlsen from the black side of the Carlsbad structure:
To this, pugetsound claimed, "The Aronian game was different. Black was able to trade off the light-squared bishop within the first ten moves and White also committed his knight to f3 earlier. Both of those factors mean that that particular Carlsbad game was pleasant for Black. What I was talking about is the move order 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. cxd5, which is the most accurate and best Carlsbad for White."
Well, @pugetsound, here is the bulk of my rebuttal:
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If 3...Nf6 in the Queen's Gambit Declined is bad, why has is it been played in over 20,000 master games? If that is not good enough, why has it been played by the likes of super grandmasters (2700+ ELO) such as Maxime Vachier Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Wesley So, World Champion Vishwanathan Anand, World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, Jan Krzysztof-Duda, Wei Yi, and Alireza Firouzja? And if even that is not enough (I cannot imagine that it would not be), why is it that chess engines recommend 3...Nf6 as the top move?
Furthermore, if the premise of your argument is that the Carlsbad structure leaves Black with a bad bishop, is that not the case with the mainlines of the Queen's Gambit Declined?
What is so special about the Carlsbad structure that restricts Black's light-squared bishop?
And structurally, the Carlsbad is not bad for White either if Black plays accurately:
In both of the games you have presented, Kramnik lost because of the mistakes he made later on — NOT because of 3...Nf6. No opening is bad (with few major exceptions of course). Especially not a perfectly natural, theoretically-known line on the THIRD MOVE.
Eddie, if you intend on defending your honor, you will have to come out now and speak yourself...
