My experience playing the Hopton attack in the Dutch Defense Tournament (Correspondence Chess)
I like playing correspondence (daily) chess. I played in the thematic Dutch Defense Tournament on chess.com from Aug 31, 2018 to Jul 11, 2020. All games started with 1. d4 f5. My main reason to play in the tournament was to gain experience playing the Hopton attack (2. Bg5) as White, recommended in the repertoire book Playing 1.d4: The Indian Defences by Lars Schandorff.
I have always believed the Dutch to be an "unsound" opening. Regardless, I have found it difficult to play classically with g3 and Bg2, both against the Stonewall Dutch and the Leningrad Dutch. White's approach with 2. Bg5 is much more aggressive; he directly attempts to expose Black's kingside weakness. On 2.. Nf6, he follows up with Bxf6 forcing exf6 and then aims to exploit Black's bad pawn structure. On 2.. g6, he develops with the intention to castle on the queenside and break open the kingside/center with h4-h5 and f3, e4 or f3, g4. If Black plays aggressively with 2.. h6 and 3.. g5, he seeks to exploit the weakened kingside tactically with a bishop sacrifice that usually leaves Black uncoordinated and under-developed. Naturally, there are other ways to play this opening as well. If Black is not well-prepared to handle the resulting positions, he is in for a rude awakening.
Another reason I like this opening is that the nature of the middlegames reached is very different from that of more mainstream openings that start with 1. d4. This leaves enough room for creativity for both sides.
In this article, I will illustrate the various themes present in the opening using my own games from the tournament as examples. Of course, I had to play games with the black side as well which I managed somehow. I ended up winning the tournament with an overall score of 31 W / 1 L / 2 D across a total of 3 rounds.
Chasing the bishop with 2.. h6
Black plays aggressively trying to expose the bishop's position, but in doing so, he creates even more weaknesses.
Disaster can strike early in the form of Qh5# if Black is not careful. The following two games against lower-rated players demonstrate this.
Another game against yenoski reached an original position as soon as move 7. I failed to find the main idea that gives me a winning game. Try to find it in the position below (position reached after 7. Bxg5 fxe4. More details later when I discuss the game).
Clearly the goal is to attack the pinned rook on f7. A direct move such as 8. Bc4 is met by d5, after which 9. Ne5 Be6 seems to hold the balance for Black. The best move is the surprising 8. Nc3!! and thus, the idea of controlling d5 to achieve the above goal is revealed. 8.. exf3 is aptly met by 9. Bc4. Central to this idea is the position of the white bishop on g5 which prevents Black from playing e6. The move 8. Bh4 is also good as it enables the white queen to control d5. In fact, even after the direct 8. Bc4, White can gain an advantage with the complicated 8.. d5 9. Ne5 Be6 10. Qg6 (Stockfish): if 10.. Qd6, then White again plays 11. Nc3 intending to meet 11.. dxc4 with 12. Nb5 and if 10.. Nf6, then either 11. Nc3 or 11. Bxf6 exf6 12. Bb3 retains the advantage.
The repertoire book had simply mentioned the move 7. Bxg5 without any variations. I tried very hard to find the best continuation, but ended up being worse in trying to force things. The entire game is produced below.
Unfortunately, my opponent resigned all his games at this point, most likely to take a break from correspondence chess. Thus I ended up winning a lost game!
Interestingly, the bishop sacrifice idea discussed in the variation below was never tested, although the variation on move 5 shows my win against CM EduardArbereshi from the same tournament.
Playing solidly with 2.. Nf6
White immediately captures the knight and forces Black to capture back with the e-pawn as otherwise, 3.. gxf6 runs into 4. e4!. Therefore, after the correct 2.. Nf6 3. Bxf6 exf6 4. e3 d5, White seeks to exploit the a2-g8 diagonal by softening up the d5 square with moves c4, Nc3, Qb3 etc. In conjunction with that, he prepares a kingside attack with h4-h5 and Ne2-f4. The following game against Mittelsaechser illustrates this idea perfectly. The variation on move 11 shows another game from the tournament that I won against NM aquiles88. I played Mittelsaechser again in Round 3, where we played a variation of the same opening that resulted in a much more complicated game with mistakes from both sides. It is given in the variation on move 4.
Playing flexibly with 2.. g6
Here, one way to play for White is to castle queenside and attack on the kingside with h4-h5. White can soften up the kingside with f3 and g4, and also play in the center with f3 and e4. Moves like Qd2 and Nh3-f2 are common in this setup. The following game against Czuwajczyk (also the TD) illustrates how things can go wrong if Black is not careful. The game is marred by a major mistake on move 10 by Black. The variation on move 3 shows yet another game I played in the tournament against gatojam with similar themes.
The 2. Bg5 variation leads to many original and interesting games as is hopefully clear from this article. Many Black players avoid lines like 2. Bg5, 2. Nc3, 2. e4 or 2. g4 by simply playing the move order 1. d4 e6 2. c4 f5 (then they must be prepared to play the French Defense if White responds with 2. e4 instead). This is one major downside of playing 2. Bg5: it cannot be played in this move order and thus, requires more preparation overall against the Dutch. However, 1. d4 e6 2. c4 f5 avoids the dangerous Leningrad variation and leads to more manageable Stonewall type of positions.
Tournament link: https://www.chess.com/tournament/dutch-defense-8
My results: https://www.chess.com/tournament/193904/player/xls235
