Stonewall Attack (Part 7)
Have you been playing Stonewall lately? If you haven't been, then I seriously recommend that you should. This blog (and possibly others) might require some of your personal experience to work its magic of helping you improve, because we're taking the Stonewall Attack up a step. Hopefully, you've been learning a lot about the Stonewall through parts 1 to 6 because this is going to get a bit tricky. I will explain about the Dutch Stonewall as well as how to use it as black.
If you love the Stonewall so much (like me) that you even try to use it as black sometimes, consider the following!
It is possible to make a Stonewall set-up in response to 1. d5, 1.c4, or other flank openings, but it is definitely not possible to use it against 1. e4 (I bet you can figure out why from the info from my other blogs). But, it is very dangerous to deploy your pieces into the Stonewall set-up as black because you go after white, thus making it very difficult. Your opponent may overpower you in development and take advantage of your weaknesses very fast, and you will eventually lose due to this. By the way, Stonewall takes too much time to develop and castle so you'd want to keep the position kind of closed to develop in peace. As black, being one step too late can mess up the entire Stonewall plan, so I will explain how to properly use it as black. Enter the Dutch Stonewall!
Unlike using the Stonewall as white, your opponent will have different plans if you use it as black. Here it is:
Notice that black does NOT move the dark-squared bishop to d6. This is because of the annoying Ba6 move which looks forward to trading it. If you do move it to that square, you will be restricted from playing Nbd7, because it blocks the queen from defending it. Anyways, it is meaningless too because of the pawn at g3, blocking its desired path. Sometimes, the bishop on e7 also works as a pin-blocker just in case of an annoying move like Bg5. Not only does the bishop have a big problem, the queen does too. She will have trouble finding a good dark-squared spot to go on, so a quick push to a nearby light-square will help her move.
