This time I ranked all 20 responses to d4 for black

@d4iscrazy

Adopting the slav set up against the catalan kills the catalan bishop and the game will be closed and boring with maneuvers. Perfectly playable for black and no black doesn't have to defend. It's an equal game.

Retreat to h4 and black is still fine.

In the position I showed before, white's king and the pieces near it are under a lot of pressure too.

@Yerachmeal

My guy 😂😂 i don't know what engine you are using but the position you just posted is at least +2,5 for white 😂 stop using the simple chesscom engine with low depth. And even without the engine, you can see black has become quite adventurous with their queen and the capture of the b2 pawn. In other words BUSTED

@d4iscrazy

I can reassure you that Bg5 is something that gives A LOT of trouble to Dutch players unless you are something like a 2000+ player and have studied the position. Speaking of which the guy above posted a much worse position for black in the Dutch after Bg5, which gives white a quick development while black experiment with their queen. Also I don't care about the catalan. It's a closed game. The arising middlegame is a closed game where positional and maneuvering ideas matter. Black has nice pieces and so does white. It's almost equal. You make it seem like the Catalan is a god-like opening.

someone commented that you can play the dutch with e6 and avoid the Bg5 line

hello, we are comparing the OPENING MOVES not the openings

@d4iscrazy

But the light square bishop is not on b7 but on f5 or h7. If the catalan was as good as you present it (don't get me wrong, it's as good as other main openings) then GM games would mostly be catalan. It's not like i said the closed (or so i remember) is winning for black but rather i said that it is playable. Black have their own plans. As far as i am concerned i take on c4 immediately as white plays g3 or Bg2 and then i try to exchange the bishops via Bd7, Bc6.

The 1… e6 Dutch is not the best Dutch imo. Sure, it avoids sidelines, but the only sidelines it avoids are suboptimal sidelines from White, and you have to learn the French and can’t play the Leningrad Dutch.

"black can play dutch with e6 to avoid Bg5"

so? how does that improve the standing of f5?

and op btw put e6 so low its laughable

we arent ranking the dutch

we are ranking 1...f5

and the 1...e6 dutch, which is "ok i guess" according to op is part of 1...e6 which is EIGHTH on ops list

dutch achieved through 1...e6 move order is not f5

f5 is always the dutch, but the dutch isnt always reached through f5

and we're ranking f5 not the dutch

so saying "e6 dutch avoids Bg5" isnt relevant to discussion on f5

that last bit is irrelevant but i digress

f5 is the dutch

the dutch can be played with a delayed f5

just because all americans are people doesnt mean all people are americans

Yeah, I deleted that comment cause I realized they weren't talking about doing e6 a couple moves into the Dutch, like I had originally thought. 1e6 Dutch is also okay, but not as good as I said in that statement. But the okay ones aren't top tier,

Maybe they will do c4 next, if there is 20 responses.

If I decide to continue it would be Nf3 next, as I'd be following the order of popularity.

I mean it wasn't even that low, I put it as the highest middle tier move.

i NEVER said f5 isnt the dutch

i said the dutch doesnt have to be through f5

and saying "1...e6 order avoids Bg5" does NOTHING for 1....f5

unless reaching a 1...f5 position through 1..e6 now means you played 1...f5

thats too low

its top 3 by most reasonable peoples rankings

yes you can avoid the dutch sidelines with 1...e6

but 1...f5 comes packaged with all the sidelines

thats all i am saying

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