Problems with early Bf5 in Queen's pawn openings
In many openings, black's light squared bishop on c8 is a problem child as in, black has great difficulty in putting it to good use or even developing it properly. This is particularly true of the French Defense or the Queen's Pawn openings. As an illustration, consider the Queen's Gambit Declined Exchange variation:
Many people, therefore, play an early Bf5 and only then e6, but that is arguably worse. White can get an advantage by playing some combination of cxd5 and Qb3 attacking b7 and/or d5. In this blog, I illustrate this concept by three of my recent correspondence games (you can check my games in the explorer for more examples). Even though the games are against lower rated players, I believe they demonstrate the themes very well.
Game 1:
The move cxd5 is a blunder. Do you see why? Try to solve it in the puzzle below:
The bishop on f5 is attacked. This tempo unleashes white's bishop on f1. Do you see the checkmate after black plays dxe4? It's Qxf7#. The other move Bxe4 is equally bad and was played in the game. Black is already in big trouble even if he retreats the bishop, to e6, for example. Let's now see the game continuation.
Game 2:
Do you see the best continuation for white? Think about black's weak light squares on the queenside. Solve it in the puzzle below:
The rest of the game (some nice tactics at the end):
Game 3:
This shows that early Bf5 lines have more problems than benefits (arguably). The Queen's Gambit Declined or other traditional defenses like the Slav/Semi-Slav are much more solid for the black player. The theme when playing e6 early is to find a way to develop the bishop later on in the game, to b7 or a6. Or to f5/g4, if white exchanges on d5 or arranges for an e5 push. If you really don't like those positions, I recommend you learn the Slav defense where Bf5 is completely acceptable. Let's see it:
Even in some of the Slav lines, black bishop can end up obstructed on g6, for example, in the famous Kramnik's ending:
If you are interested, check out the games in this line from the World Championship between Topalov and Kramnik or Topalov and Anand. The big theoretical question in many of the Slav lines is whether Bf5 is good or bad for black. For this reason, I find this opening very fascinating for both sides. Nonetheless, it has a very respectable reputation as a defense for black.
Links for my games:
https://www.chess.com/daily/game/201696302
