Black Repertoire Question

Well if you have prepared responses to 1. e4 and 1. d4 and feel reasonably comfortable, then that's enough. These are the only two openings that really punish opponent's for responding incorrectly, namely the Queen's Gambit. But with perfect play by Black, the drawbacks to any opening are minor.

You don't really need a set response to anything other than 1. e4 and 1. d4 because they are all rather passive. This is not to say that they are weak openings, but since they don't directly occupy the center, Black is left free to do a lot of things.

c4, f4, Nf3, and Nc3 present Black with lots of options. b3 and g3 offer Black even more choices. Random stuff like a4, h4, etc. is sort of like handing Black the tempo, which is fine since White starts out ahead anyway.

To use a practical example, let's say you're playing a game and someone opens 1. Nf3. If you want to play a 1. e4 style opening, you can transpose the game into a Guioco Piano, Ruy Lopez, etc. by countering Nc6. Your opponent will probably play something like 2. e4, unless he wants to do something offbeat like King's Indian. If you're feeling more comfortable with a 1. d4 opening on that day, you can counter with Nf6 (the mirror) or d5 and your opponent will probably opt to transpose into Queen's Gambit, which will allow you to play whatever you normally do against it.

1. e4 forces you to play a specific style of game, and 1. d4 does as well. But all the other openings give you the choice of being classical or hypermodern, and you can take the initiative in transposing the opening into something you're more comfortable with.

Thanks (brandonQDSH), that post gave me lot's to think about.

Had a question/query to this comment "Well if you have prepared responses to 1. e4 and 1. d4 and feel reasonably comfortable, then that's enough".

I think I know what you mean regarding 1. e4 (there are choices like silician, french, caro-kann, scandinavian, ...).  But not sure about 1. d4.

Against 1. d4 someone would need to have a response against the queens gambit.  But there are other 1. d4 openings (like Torre Attack, London System, Colle System, Veresov Opening, Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Trompowsky, ...).  So the question is how to get a handle on those.  It would be nice for Black to have a 'system' he could use against all those (maybe not cutting edge - but something similiar and reasonably effective to use against each).  I guess what i'm saying (asking), is that it seems that the response to the queens gambit might not be usable against all the other 1.d4 continuations by white.?.   Can you give me your thoughts on this?

1. d4 or any other strategic opening that delays tactics almost always revolves around White playing c4 and Black trying to minimize the impact of it. The reasons why Whites wants to do this are to gain a spacial advantage and establish better control of the center. You force Black to immediately respond to the threat of cxd4. Similar to the Sicilian, if you can trade c-pawn for d-pawn, that's generally a good thing.

The Queen's Gambit does this right away, and forces Black to have an immediate answer, otherwise White comes out of the opening at least a little ahead.

If you understand the ideas behind the Queen's Gambit and how Black should defend, then the other openings that derive from 1. d4 shouldn't confuse you. Since White comes out ahead if Black accepts the gambit, let's look specifically at the QGD. Your standard Queen's Gambit Declined:

If you notice the structure of the QGD, you can see why people typically prefer an Indian Defense, because it is more flexible, and you play pretty much the same moves, but in a different order:

The Colle System (or any system for that matter) plays much more passive than the Queen's Gambit. As a result you sacrifice some of the offensive potential White has in opening 1. d4, but you gain a flexible opening that you can play against whatever Black decides to do. Because the Colle gives Black more choices than the traditional QG, masters tend to lean towards the later:

The London System would be handled by Black much like the Colle System.

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4

Because White's third move doesn't immediately threaten Black's pieces, Black can do pretty much whatever he wants here. He's not forced to defend his d-pawn and can now choose to attack or defend.

In summary, once you understand the motifs behind the traditional Queen's Gambit Declined, you can see that all other 1. d4 openings follow the same strategy. After 1. d4 by White, 2. c4 is preferred because it claims the center and forces Black to reply immediately. Without this tension, White gives Black the green light to shift the game more towards his liking. If you can defend against the Queen's Gambit, you can defend against all similar openings, and will come out of the opening, at worse, only slightly behind in tempo and position.

Thanks!  That really helps!  I'll follow your advice in approaching 1. d4 from a QGD perspective first, and try to use a similiar setup to non QG white d4 openings.

Just one followup question ...

Initially i was thinking about going with a nimzo-bogo indian approach to the queens gambit.  But i have a feeling like that choice probably isn't something that can be applied as universally as other QGD choices, since if white doesn't play c4 (and plays c3 instead like in colle), then I'm not sure but that might invalidate the book info on bogo-nimzo (which assumes c4 by white).

If my reasoning is true, i think that leaves choices like QID, KID, Slav.  Curious, am I missing some other major options here?  Or am I wrong in rejecting Bogo-Nimzo in this way?

Thanks!

Thinking about your description about the Colle up above, I"m realizing that if 5 ... cxd4 6 cxd4 occurs, then 6 ... Bb5 will get to a nimzo-bogo approach.

But if White replies 6 exd4 then it might not - but maybe I don't need to worry about that too much (it's probably a weaker move).?.

I noticed that the Black Queens pawn is on d5 in your examples.  I have limited knowledge of the indian approaches, but I had thought the queen pawn stayed back to allow the queens bishop to fianchetto and have more scope.?. 

if you know the basic ideas behind the opnings you want to play, you're all right with that.  if you feel like you are being surprised by openings, just pick the main line and stick to it.  Play the opening you like, but if you're forced out, have a backup.

fion5,

Yes, all the openings have a high likelihood of transposing into one another. It's a good thing to notice because if you're playing a game and your somewhat uncomfortable with the opening so far, you may see an opportunity to transpose the game into a direction you're much more familiar and/or comfortable with.

And yes, as a necessary evil, the majority of the defenses to d4 do have Black's d-pawn resting at d5. The reason for this is, without a solid post on d5, Black has virtually no way to combat White's aggressive d4-c4 pawn structure. You can concede a spatial advantage to White and try an e6-d6 sort of defense, but even that won't solve your Bishop problems. Without d5, White will also be able to push e4, and back that up with f3, and will thus blunt the effectiveness of your fianchetto:

As you can see in the example above, White enjoys some premium real-estate on the board and will have more active pieces throughout the game. Black will be trying to shore up it's defense with moves like h6 and a6, and can maybe open up his game will a well-timed c5! But I digress . . .

As you correctly pointed out, in defending against 1. d4, Black does often suffer from an inactive light Bishop. The truth is that every opening has it's strengths and weaknesses, and even the best of the best 1. e4 and 1. d4, are no exceptions. You'll notice to though, that though Black's light Bishop is trapped, White also suffers from his dark Bishop being hemmed in by his pawn structure. You'll see a lot of good tournament players (1500-1800 USCF) try to solve this issue by developing the dark Bishop early to avoid this, but it's rare to see grandmasters do it. The following game is sort of a Tartakower/Semi-Slav hybrid that I don't know how to classify:

In the Scandinavian all White alternatives to 2. exd5 are inferior and rarely seen at master level. Consider that if White is not going to capture the pawn there would be no French Defense and no Caro-Kann Defense. Why prepare ... d5 when you can just play it without suffering any penalty whatsoever?

Amateur players on the other hand need to be prepared for the rag-tag band of anti-Scandinavians:

2. e5 c5! You can also play 2. ... Bf5 but the pawn move is probably better because the bishop may prefer to go to g4 to pin a knight.

2. d4 dxe4 The Blackmar-Diemer happens and you need to be prepared. If you have nothing I can recommend the Lemberger Countergambit 3. Nc3 e5!? which leads to easy equality. It is a very practical choice for the Scandinavian because the amount of theory you need to learn is limited, you don't have to do a lot of defending, and it leads to simple open positions that probably are not appealing to a BDG player. White often avoids this variation by playing 1. d4 d5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. e4 but that is impossible in the Scandinavian.

2. Nf3 dxe4 The rare and unsound Tennison Gambit is considered to be part of the Reti Opening 1. Nf3.

2. Nc3 is a real variation which deserves a little respect but Black has several good choices. I like 2. ... exd4 3. Nxe4 Nd7 (compare the Caro-Kann).

After 1.e4 d5 2.Nc3 dxe4 3.Nxe4 Black also has the provocative 3...Qd5, offering to reenter the main lines by means of 4.Nc3. Make sure that you don't fall for 4.Qf3 Nf6?? 5.Nxf6+ though; obviously 5.Bf5 is a better answer, when the game should be equal.