the colle system

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scandium

As I said, white's move order may vary but not the moves themself. Just to amuse myself, I ran it through Opening Explorer and chose mostly symmetrical replies for black (except Bd7 instead of Bd6, and c5 instead of c6).

In the line it led to, there were 6 games at Master level, with white playing 8.e4 (which is very slow for creating any kind of tension in the center, which was the point I was making - whether e4 comes on move 10 or 8). The 6 games were a perfect split: 2 wins for white, 2 for black, and 2 draws.

Not very inspiring. And since the whole basis of the Colle is in playing scripted moves with a very basic plan centering around a delayed e4 push (delayed because white takes two moves to play it and has to set it up first), white has little say in how black develops to meet it and therefore no advantage - unless black blunders.

So where is the nightmare for black that the Colle supposedly creates?

pfren

True. If Black plays "unambitiously" ...Nbd7 and ...Be7 against the Koltanowski, the best white can expect is a French Rubinstein a tempo down for him- not such a great achievement...

The Zukertort is overall more principled, positionally wise, but still no advantage if Black understands what he is doing.