Colle System

I have found to love the colle. I am still a beginner (ELO 1600), and was wondering if there are any books you could recommend. Another question that I have : why are there so few master games that play the traditional colle?

The Colle is a system which can be learnt pretty easy because it employs only a limited amount of stretegic ideas. While this makes it a good practical opening choice for players of sub-professional level, you need more original plans to actually play for a win a master game - as shown by Anand these days   Probably that's the reason the masters don't use the Colle so often.

I'm sorry, but I don't know which books to recommend on the Colle, as my relation to this system is not one of sympathy...

However, if you want to progress in chess and learn a larger variety of plans, I suggest after some time you adopt another opening as White.

My game is fairly good, but my openings lagg behind. Do you have any suggestions to a good opening. (ive tried ruy lopez, giouco piano, sicilian, nimzo indian, kings indian, queens gambit accepted/declined, colle, hippo, fried liver, evans gambit, gruenfeld, english, hypermodern and finally the scotch game.

There are three books I would recommend if you wish to pursue the Colle. In order of being published; A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire - Summerscale, Starting Out: The Colle - Palliser; Zuke 'Em - The Colle Zukertort Revolutionized - Rudel. The last two are very recent books, whilst the first is an older book with many good lines to play when Black steers the game away from the desired Colle.

As with any opening, there isn't any guarantee of an advantage. But, if you get to a position that you are more familiar with than your opponent, then the chances increase that your opponent will make a mistake before you do.

For me the best book on the Colle was the one by Koltanowski.  I don't play the Colle anymore, too little pressure for White, except for fun but I do see it as black occasionally.

Which Colle are you playing? They are completely different creatures.

The Colle-Koltanowski or "c3-Colle" is based on the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3 e6 4.Bd3 (in my upcoming book, I actually suggest C-K players switch up their moves and play 4.Nbd2 here) c4 5.c3

The Colle-Zukertort or "b3-Colle" plays 5.b3 instead. [And I do not suggest you switch the moves in that case.

The Colle presents the master with too few problems as black and thus is not seen at the highest levels.  Other openings give White more chances.  I  still think (as I said earlier) George Koltanowski's book is the best on the Colle, if you can find it.  It might not have the latest theory but if you want to understand the Colle it is great.  I also have a book on Edgard Colle's games that is very good, great games, even if the number of "Colle" openings is limited.

Carl,

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. The reason why the Colle [especially the Colle-Zukertort] is not found at the highest levels is not that it presents Black too few problems (though recently there has been some problems in the mainlines for those who follow the actual theory...which is a pretty small group). The reason it is not played at the highest levels is that generally Black knows he can problems winning against it (especially the C-Z) and will deviate out of the Colle to play some type of pet defense. It is very vaguely similar to the prevalence of 3.Bb5+ against the Sicilian to avoid the open Najdorf.

There are plenty of strong players who play or have played the Colle. Yusupov, of course (ranked number 2 or 3 in the world at one time), Aaron Summerscale and Susan Polgar have all played the C-Z. Summerscale stopped not because of the actual mainline but due to the deviations that were hard to beat [see foreword to my book, available on my excerpts page.]

Statistics bare this out in both individual cases and in aggregate. Vlatko Kovacevic ha splayed the C-Z against all sorts of setups. I found 16 games of his that offered his opponent the C-Z [1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3], and in only 1 example did his opponent decide to take it [3...e6].

If you don't believe me, just go through your databases and look for all the games that appear to be a C-Z and try to find ones that actually use the mainline move order. White has to trick Black into a C-Z.

When I did research for Zuke 'Em, I found nearly 250 games between IM level [or above] players, and less than a quarter of the time did Black go in for the C-Z with 3...e3. Lesst than 1/10 of the time did the game continue 4.Bd3 c5.

I describe some of these issues in the first chapter of Zuke 'Em [the entire first chapter is available as a free download from that Excerpt page I linked to above.] Anyone interested in the Colle and wanting an honest discussion of some of its problems (knowing that I address these very problems in the book) should take a look at that PDF.