For all people who believe in the Dutch Defence/Stonewall Dutch or are unsure what to play vs 1d4

For several years I was struggling a lot against 1d4 especially above 2300 where the white player seemed unbeatable until I decided to re-visit the Dutch defence. Below you can find some of my games while on the journey to 2400 which I was finally able to reach after having more than 50 points net rating gain in the last 50 Dutch defence games. Yes, the Dutch defence takes time to learn and you will have painful losses but that is true of any other opening. If you are struggling against 1d4 I highly recommend the Dutch. The opening`s reputation is totally undeserved and people have made it to GM after switching to the Dutch (Nikola Sedlak) and after being unable to do so by playing the classical systems.

White cannot decline the Dutch defence and can forget about :

-Getting early positional advantages for free, Unchallenged spatial gains, Avoiding complications, Steering the game towards some slightly practically advantageous endgame from the get go, Getting away with inaccuracies

https://youtu.be/EDkMkZshnho?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/Ip2-iLv2xwg?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/4fyeZttoXrI?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/4HqQW_aHRdk?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/k0vxruNaLio?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/cH2nnt9Tjbg?feature=shared

I used to play the Dutch and got some very exciting positions, but like you said, a lot of painful losses. Thanks for the resources.

I was the same, I gave it up many years ago only to re-discover it and its true potential 2 years ago. I said to myself I "remember playing the Dutch I was losing badly but at least I was having crushing wins too, lets try this again " For me the greatest thing about the Dutch is the insane come-back factor this opening has. You can fight your way out of worse positions similarly to the way you do in the Sicilian defence and you don`t have to go down without a fight like in the classical systems vs 1d4 where if your position gets slightly inferior it deteriorates rapidly until you just lose.

Yeah, openings like the Dutch are very flexible, so many plans for black. I hate boring, balanced openings from d4, sometimes you gotta mix things up.

Is it good below 1800?

Yes it is but it depends on the player, one needs to be willing to study and enjoy the process. Some people might say it is not good below 1800 but I don`t agree with the notion openings should be played based on one`s rating. Personally, If I could turn back time, I would not have moved away from the Dutch and would have stuck with it no matter what. Playing the Dutch will improve one`s overall understanding of dynamic play, calculation and unbalanced positions which will serve later when you get to meet these more often and when these are enforced on you by your opponent. You can make the switch gradually and test the Dutch while playing your current opening but studying will be required regardless.

Ive struggled a lot against D4, C4, and NF3. Do you know of any good recources to learn the dutch?

What? OP you say the Dutch is good?

Better stop with that crazy talk... a couple of people here (about 300 elo pts below you ) put a verbal smack down on people here when they dared say the same thing.

Well, they are entitled to their opinion of course but maybe that is why they are kind of stuck where they are . I will go even further than my initial post and say that the Dutch defence is in fact hands down the best response to 1d4. No other opening will let the black player completely wipe white off the board, perhaps with the exception of the Blumenfeld Gambit. which can be declined and is a bit dubious, the Dutch can`t be declined and is perfectly sound. It is no walk in the the park and there is a lot to learn but the fact remains - white cannot get away with the stuff they normally get away with in the classical systems and needs to be very very careful.

Yes, I don`t play one Dutch defence against everything so here is how I go about it and I will list the resources I have used for each of these.

Stonewall Dutch vs Catalan, Veresov  and any weird white set ups where they keep the DS bishop behind the pawn chain and don`t develop it to g5 or f4 (Catalan - Nikola Sedlak - Dutch Stonewall, Veresov - MIkhail Marin - Dutch Sidelines)

Leningrad vs Hopton Attack (2Bg5) - Mikhail Marin - Dutch Sidelines

Classical Dutch vs London - I ran computer matches between engines to come up with a full repertoire - examples below

Ilyin-Zhenevsky Dutch vs 1c4 if white delays d4 and goes for diabolical d3 I ran computer matches between engines to come up with a full repertoire - example below (if they play d4 and don`t play d3 this transposes - see Nimzo Dutch hybrid below)

Dutch Nimzo hybrid vs d4,c4,Nc3 - here I just play chess, Bb4+Bb7+Ne4

Which of the above you will play vs 1Nf3 will depend on what white choses as a follow up as white can go for Catalan, London, English or Bg5 set up - need to be careful after bg5 Ne2 (or Nc3) they plan quick e4 so I go for a Stonewall there, anything else transposes to the above systems - source for studying Mikhail Marin - Dutch sidelines

Ilyin-Zhenevsky hybrid vs c4 where d4 is delayed - biggest test for the Dutch in my view

Dutch vs London (if c3 then Bd6 if Nc3 then Bb4)

I watched your games. Good games and nice commentary. That said... I think you've become a bit too enthused and captivated by the Dutch. You enjoy the Dutch, that's great. Maybe that is what really matters. But your winrate in the Dutch on your current account, after 1. d4, is actually not astounding. It's 54% for white vs. 39% for black... I don't see how you can attribute your rise in elo to the Dutch specifically, based on those numbers. Something tells me you could achieve that result in another opening. Infact... in the Reti white is 14-1 against you, and you're playing the dutch there. Statements like "It's the best response to d4" are sort-of meaningless nonsense. What does "best" mean in this statement? Is it merely a subjective statement, or is there some rationale for it?

You can appeal to your elo all you like, you were already 2300 before playing the dutch so it's really not an argument, but players rated higher than you say the opposite - Simon Williams love the Dutch but he acknowledges it's dubious. Hikaru tried to make it work for a while, but he says it's dubious. People at the top of their game have all kinds of opinions, often contradicting one another, but the general consensus at the top is that the defense is dubious. The argument of "this one person did manage to make GM playing my defense" is not actually argument for it being the best defense to D4, in some objective sense.

Now, if you're a good player I'm sure you can make it work, and you're going to win with it. Stylistically it's even possible that your strengths are maximized in the Dutch... i.e. the particular things you excel at over other players are required more of you in the dutch compared to other openings. That could justify a subjective statement like "The Dutch is my best defense to d4", but no more than that.

But if a typical player switches to the Dutch (i.e. not someone 2300 elo rapid or whatever your rating is), they're going to get owned. Because they will just get basted like a rotary chicken in the countless ways white can baste them early on. And that is just the observed result in practice, and supported by the data, so...

One positive thing I will say about the dutch is it allows you to bypass all the typical d4 theory. That's nice but it comes with a major downside of opening up the king and facing some chaotic lines, it's again more of an argument from personal preference and likes than some objective serious statement.

Thank you very much. I understand your points and was expecting for someone to comment along exactly those lines.

My score with it here includes all games since day one and that involves a lot of experimentation, wandering around, not knowing what to do learning on my own and getting destroyed etc. Of course this will result in a massive negative score with any new opening as is the case with any new opening when just taken up. I can create a new account and play the Dutch and show a massive positive score now that I have mastered it to some extent but why would I? Let people know that mastering this opening is as difficult as any other and perhaps even more. In addition what if not the opening is the reason for your losses and you in fact come out of it equal or even better but lose for other reasons (middlegame endgame etc). Does someone`s score with an opening tell you that you that, I`m afraid not.

I do in fact attribute my rating exactly to Dutch defence for the following reason(if we go based on statistics). You seem to think there is not much of difference between 2300 and 2400 so the Dutch could not have been it. Trust me nothing can be further from the truth. Below you can see a picture of all the books I had to read to get from 2300 to 2400. Also you seem to think getting to 2300 makes you a 2300 player but the truth is you are going to slip back quite a number of times below and around 2200 before you go on to stabilise above 2300 as I did because the competition above 2300 is so tough. The reason I reached 2400 because of the Dutch defence is the positive score with Black in the last 50 games leading from 2200 to 2400+ resulting in a 50+ points net rating gain.( before that time and time again I would get stopped around 2300-2350 by 1d4 and tilt) My score with the opening prior to these 50 games is largely irrelevant. ("I was young and I was foolish" as the song goes)

I agree that if a typical player switches to the Dutch they will get destroyed but so what. A typical Dutch player will also get destroyed if they switch to KID, Slav, QGD etc , my point being you get destroyed in new openings always and without exception no matter what.

There is one problem with your argument that someone else says the Dutch is not good and the general consensus is that the opening is dubious and that is that by following what someone else says blindly you are letting other people do the thinking for you. I on the other hand don`t and if the Dutch defence is bad I want to verify this for myself by putting in the work first and making my own conclusions later. Do you mind showing me the concrete variations because of which the Dutch is a dubious opening? That I would call concrete evidence that the opening is dubious and whether someone else says it is just because they "think so" isn`t. However if you actually go down to the end of these so called dubious lines you will find out that people are losing not because the opening is bad but because they don`t seem to know what to do, because they end up losing in lack-luster fashion they abandon the opening.

I never said the Dutch was the best response to 1d4 because someone else made it to a GM with it. My claim in the 1st post mentioning a GM who got the tile by using the Dutch was that the Dutch is vastly under-rated. I only made the claim the Dutch is the best response to 1d4 in a later post and if you want I can make the distinction being objectively best and my subjective opinion and that is yes indeed I think the Dutch is the best response to 1d4 and that is my subjective opinion which I am entitled to same was as my opinion about the best kind of cake for example. I do not know the objectively correct answer and neither does Hikaru nor Simon Williams.

If you are going to bring that point from my first post and not the others you seem to have cherry- picked a little bit because you did not mention the others namely

"White cannot decline the Dutch defence and can forget about :

-Getting early positional advantages for free, Unchallenged spatial gains, Avoiding complications, Steering the game towards some slightly practically advantageous endgame from the get go, Getting away with inaccuracies" Which happens to be exactly the reason I think the Dutch defence is best. And please note that is not to say "The is my best defence against 1d4" as you are suggesting, I am saying I think that can be the best defence to 1d4 for the vast majority of people. So think of this as my subjective believe about what I think to be objectively correct without me making the claim to be necessarily so.

Yes, openings are a matter of style and preference, you may seem to think f5 creates weaknesses, I think it creates strengths.

The dutch is a decent opening, however even GM Artur Yusupov, when he was competing in the Candidates for the World Championship, along with his second Dolmatov (both of Dvoretsky's friends and confidants), felt that Nh3 gave Black a very hard time in the Stonewall Dutch, and they only liked playing the stonewall against Nf3 systems, and Black had too many difficulties achieving full equality in the classical dutch--even if he is able to force the ...e5 break, it isn't clear how he can proceed, since Black can absolutely not play ...c5 prematurely, since if the center gets locked (Black ends up pushing ...e5-e4), white gets a free hand on the kingside with f2-f3, g2-g4 and other breaks). However I do remember some nuance about the white Ba3 move being ineffective if Black has not played ...e5, since Black counters with ....a5!, and something about d4-d5 being bad if Black's c-pawn is still on c6 (not on c5, when d5 or dxe5 is often good).

Yusupov played in the candidates 30 years ago. A lot has changed since then computers and theory wise. This is how Carlsen treats the Nh3 set ups with the Stonewall which he believes to be decent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=257GxuT5yVc

However you don`t even have to play the Stonewall when white goes Nh3 you can play d6 as Carlsen also suggests in the above video. Which is in fact better.

No, because it was actually you who appealed to your elo as justification for your claims, which is to say that the people who do no agree with you are incapable of thinking for themselves. My appeal to Hikaru is simply a response to that statement, i.e. if my elo makes me incapable of thinking, so does yours. It's your argument, not mine.

The move f5 creates strengths and weaknesses.

You had about 50 games or so in the dutch. If many of those games occurred while you were learning the opening, how many dutch games have you played which you felt confident in? And what was your score?

I played the Leningrad dutch back when I was 1500 or so. I gave it up after a number of experiences where, after a long fought game, checks in the mid or late game resulted in a losing position. It's likely I wasn't playing it correctly, but that's a given.

There are plenty of lines which give the dutch trouble, both early on and into the mid / late game. If you play precisely you can mitigate the problems in the opening, sure. But your argument here is idealistic. For one, the weaknesses created by f5 are permanent, and no one plays precisely through the entirety of the game. There will always be games where you find yourself in less-than-ideal positions. Even during the opening, good players are going to forget things and make mistakes. So the claim an opening is dubious is, in part, a practical argument. It's also rational insofar as f5 is a weakening move, and we can just tell that. But if we want to validate these statements in an objective way the closest way of doing we have would be to either a) look at the raw data, and just note broadly what the success vs. failure rate is, b) ask an engine. Well you've dismissed the winrates, but the engine eval remains what it is. Since chess isn't solved these are the most "objective" measures available, so yes, it remains a matter of opinion... the whole debate is speculative, but nonetheless the evidence we do have supports my assertion.

The other thing I would say is that a line can be dubious but still highly effective. There are many such lines. Even at 2400 level, if people aren't studying the dutch often (it's not that common) you might find it just works practically. That's sort of a separate conversation, though. This kind of line may not work quite as well in a tournament setting where people know you play the dutch beforehand and are prepping for you, for example. But in an online setting maybe it's just performing outstandingly well, given the amount of prep you've put into it, for reasons that go beyond the board. I notice you have a high rating here, but no title attached. Have you played OTB or in tournaments yet? If you have any aspiration of doing that... well, your opening needs to be tested under those conditions.

A very strong Russian grandmaster once said something like "Often in the Dutch, black's best move is ...f5-f7".

To continue this debate:

I think anyone who plays the Stonewall Dutch and has had problems with tall pawns and sleeping rooks in the corner needs to carefully examine the relationship between the Dutch (stonewall) and the Catalan/Queen's Indian openings.

In the dutch, you make a committal move instantly or on the second move: 1...f5, or 1...e6 and 2...f5 (if White doesn't play e4). So you have assumed "potential" structural weaknesses before the central position is clarified. When you complete the "wall", you have an issue with queenside development, lack of space, and the c8 bishop issue. This early committing to a strategy makes White's attempts rather direct: exchanging his 'bad' bishop on c1 for black's, either by Nh3 and Bc1-f4, or by a2-a4, then Bc1-a3 sometimes. Or aiming to control the e5 square by planting knights on f3 and d3 then looking for possible pawn breaks or expansions, and a way to expel black's knight on e4, if it lands there. Or possibly mining the queenside or c-file (minority attack/pawn storms, etc), or even switching to the kingside if Black overextends with....g5, etc.

Now let's look at the Queen's Indian Defense.

One of the main lines involve an early ...Ba6, where White plays b2-b3 and black checks on b4, white blocks with Bd2 and then Black goes back to e7 with the B. White often has to make a decision on the bishop and sometimes puts it on c3. Then he plays moves like Qc2, Rd1, and aims for some sort of e4 pawn break while Black aims for either ....c5 or sometimes ....b5.

Paradoxically, a rather effective Black option against this strategy is to suddenly switch to a *stonewall* with ....Ne4 and ...f5(!), getting a stonewall dutch formation where suddenly White can't play e4, and due to his bishop being on c3, can't make the favorable trade of dark-squared bishops. This strategy is rather weak if white's d2 bishop can still get to f4 or is on f4!

Now let's look at the Catalan.

In the quite popular ....d5 and ...Bb4+ lines where White blocks with Nbd2 rather than Bd2, one system for White is to play the moves b3 (after castling) and Bb2. Played by many GM's, although Ne5 is considered the primary line. Oddly enough, in that b3/Bb2 line, Black can once again switch to ...Ne4 and play ...f5, transposing right into a Stonewall! And he has a decent share of chances. Usually...c5 or ...c6 is aimed for, if ...c6 is played, Black adopts some sort of flexible waiting strategy with his rooks to see where White will engage with pawn breaks on the d4/c4 vs c6/d5/e6 complex.

The entire difference between this system and the direct Dutch, is that Black waits until White places his dark-squared bishop in an ineffective position (trying to play e4 to open things up), and Black adopts a sudden Stonewall to counter White's plan. Then you can argue that blacks c8 bishop is no worse than White's b2 bishop, and then the g2 bishop is also lacking fruitful employment for awhile. Then the ...f5 "weakness" is no longer as much of a concern as the pieces are developed in a more logical manner to counter White's plans when White is least prepared for this.

This is worth some consideration.

No such argument was ever made. That is your interpretation which is not correrct. Yes my elo is a justification for my claims (as confirmed by the pie chart provided above) but why are you assuming that everyone who does not agree with me is incapable of thinking for themselves on the contrary- IF ANYTHING, ANYONE WHO AGREES with me WITHOUT HAVING DONE THE WORK IS BY THE ABOVE DEFINITION INCAPABLE OF THINKING FOR THEMSELVES and not the other way around.

Lets address your quote below

"You had about 50 games or so in the dutch. If many of those games occurred while you were learning the opening, how many dutch games have you played which you felt confident in? And what was your score?"

It is completely irrelevant, I might have lost all my game prior to those 50 or have not been confident in any of them that is also irrelevant because the elo gain justification is there -27 wins 20 losses 3 draws = (27-20)*8 = 56 points net rating gain while being at 2200 all the way through 2400. 54% score vs 1d4 as black is no joke especially with the above net gain in mind.

Also we can address this statement of yours

"I played the Leningrad dutch back when I was 1500 or so. I gave it up after a number of experiences where, after a long fought game, checks in the mid or late game resulted in a losing position. It's likely I wasn't playing it correctly, but that's a given."

It is also completely irrelevant why you at 1500 did not have success with the Dutch. At 1500 there is a lot to learn about chess in general so you can blame the Dutch all you I just don`t buy it. It appears to be more of a case of you not putting in the work.

You have failed to provide the concrete lines I asked for making the Dutch a dubious opening. Can you kindly provide them so we can continue the debate. As for your "general" concerns. No f5 is not a weakening move because it stops white`s expansion in the center as e4 becomes difficult to play f5 also opens the way for a kinsgisde attack which is a central motif in the Dutch and supports the kinght when it lands on e4. You are not comfortable with the arising positions? That is your problem I`m afraid it does not say anything about the objective evaluation. (see I can play the objective/subjective game too)

You claim some lines can be dubious (waiting to see the proof) yet can be highly effective? Well in that case why are we having this argument. you should take up those lines and play them.

That is correct and in fact is why I think the Stonewall is the best way to counter the Catalan - it is because it neutralises the white LS bishop. In general you don`t play the Stonewall vs Non- Catalan set ups (there are exceptions). White`s bishop has to be on g2 so that the Stonewall works because your then "bad" bishop is infact as good as whites bishop and sometimes even better. (The Nh3 set up is the only Catalan set up where the Stonewall becomes difficult to play so in that case you play d6). Once other exception coming from a 1c4 move order is when they play c4 bg2 and d3 - the Stonewall does not work here but the Ilyin Zhenevsky Dutch does.