Slav or Semi Slav

The slav as a more straightforward aim, and better for inexperienced players.

The semi-slav is extraordinary popular in chess.com vote chess games for no obvious reason. It seems to be based on fear of the exchange variation, c6 gives option of c6xd5. In the Bg5 lines nobody has any feel, or knowledge of the real semi-slav lines like the Botvinnik variation, and usually play preceedes in Queens Gambit declined with Be7 and 0.0 etc, where c6 has been played unnecessarily early.

I’m assuming you’re aware the Semi-Slav is actually better than the Slav, and so this gripe is with the players who don’t understand the Semi-Slav and not the Semi-Slav itself. It makes a decent amount of sense, good and bad players alike will play into the Semi-Slav, but the bad players who outnumber the good players won’t understand how it works. Similarly, a vote chess game I’m in is a Najdorf that follows 6. Bd3?! Qb6?!

To be fair I was the one who proposed Qb6 and persuaded others to vote it into play. White didn’t figure out the correct plan against it and justified the move and we’re doing quite well now actually.

Even if I didn’t already know the Semi-Slav was better than the Slav, there’s a quick answer. In the Semi-Slav, the bishop goes on b7, the best diagonal for it, so it’s slightly better. The reason the Semi-Slav and Slav are different than the French and Caro-Kann is that in the e4 duo, e5 locks up the pawn structure favorably for White and the bishop is terrible locked out of the game, but in the d4 duo, c5 locks up the game favorably for Black, who can play e5 or b6 and the bishop can go anywhere still.