How easy is to play d4

When I started playing chess one year ago e4 and e5 was the only thing that on my mind. Nowadays I think I am getting older and want some more calm games. Anyway Im looking for a nice book to learn the d4 world. Thank you in advance.

It will usually be met with d5 or nf6. I would advise the queen's gambit for the former or c4 for the latter. The usual idiot will play the queen's gambit accepted line and try and hold onto that pawn else you're looking at a Slav' or an Indian defence which will make it a solid interesting game.

Not sure I agree with that. If you don't know any theory and you play c4 against Nf6 your'e asking for trouble. examples include openings like the grunfeld, benoni, etc. I would recomend playing 2. Nf3 or catalan games if you want really quiet games.

Thank you, Yes I more of the calm games type of girl so 2.Nf3 seems safer, I played some games against Nf6 in live chess and got in really messy positions

 "Grandmaster Repertoire" volume 1&2 by Boris Avrukh seems interesting but a little expensive. Thank you for your recommendations

No, not at all but thanks for the comment

FOr 1.d4, the Schandorff books are excellent. Different lines than Avrukh. You need both the Queen's Gambit book and the Indian Defences book. Top shelf stuff.

FCO is great for high-level, and it does give reasonings behind the moves. Then you can move to Watson's four volumes.

I'm not familiar with NCO or MCO. Does NCO explain reasoning behind the moves?

NCO and MCO are both similar with just some symbolic (informator style) comments.

I like cox "starting out: 1.d4", but i'm not sure about every line there. In the semi-slav he has the botwinnik, the anti-moscow gambit and the marshall gambit. Thats hard stuff.

I also have Watsons 1.d4 repertoire book with a more solid approach. But in some lines that seems to be to subtile to me.

A mix of both will most likely work for me.

On the other hand there are books on queens pawn games like the colle, barry attack, and so on. E. g. Summerscales "a killer chess repertoire". But most experienced black players have good ways to play against that lines. The repertoire books for black will offer good lines against such systems. E. g. Cox "dealing with d4 deviations" or the hardcore stuff in http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/products/1/172/grandmaster_repertoire_11_-_beating_1d4_sidelines_by_boris_avrukh/

To be fair if you play d4 you can't avoid 2.c4 forever as other options are rather meek.

For d4 you need to know queens gambit main lines and some queens Indian lines (I recommend avoiding nimzo and learn the bogo Indian. Nimzo is known to be good for black and the pin is where beginner d4 players usually go wrong). There are a lot of other lines but those are not essential in that they can usually be declined while maintaining a good position. Most of the ways to decline involve not advancing the pawn in question and simply protecting it (e.g. e3 declines the grunfeld. If 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 benoni try, 3. Nf3 is perfectly fine and declines it.)

overall d4 is not hard to play if you play it according to opening principles and play solid developing moves.

Are there any downloads of these items in PDF format?

Ammanian wrote:

*FCO Fundamental Chess Openings by Paul Van Der Steren (The best opening book to start with, in my opinion).

*Modern Chess Openings 15th ed. (Well-known book for intermediate level players.. Unfortunately, it has many typographical errors like the 14th edition).

*Nunn's Chess Openings (For higher level players.. and has a better coverage for more openings).

The first book is better for students who want to understand the openings better.. not only to memorize the best lines in an opening.

These contain variety of openings.. not only d4.. A book just for d4 openings must be comlicated and for high level players, professionals and even masters. The best example of these books is "Grandmaster Repertoire" volume 1&2 by Boris Avrukh. They "just" cover every line after 1:d4.

These two book don`t cover every good line after 1.d4. E. g. against the queens gambit declined he "only" has the catalan, because its a repertoire book. If one want to play the exchange variation, the classical main lines (Tartakower, Lasker) or Bf4-Systems, he has to look into other books.

And a book just for 1.d4 mustn`t be that complicated. There is the starting out series which is good for me as 1600 player. Avrukhs Grandmaster Repertoire is for 2100+ or so.

Holly shit. One year and 1845 in blitz. Impressive.

its a piece of cake people dont want to play ''the boring postions after'' d4 d5 so most people will play the benko,benoni,KID,budapest not bad openings just dont give white anything to complain while most people dont play what gives white a headache grunfeld,dutch,nimzo ''cause they are too complicated''.The biggiest trick is to ''study'' as much as posiblle master games and read andrew solits pawn structer.

You can play d4 in search of wild games without handle too much theory. This book could be useful for those who look for something like that: http://seagaard.dk/review/eng/bo_opening/ev_attacking_with_1d4.asp?KATID=BO&ProductID=90&PUBID=EV&AUTID=61

If you want a solid opening that does not require a lot of memorization then you can play the London System. It gives up some of white's opening advantage. The goal is not to come out of the opening with an advantage, but to come out of the opening with an equal position with little memorization required. London System is solid. Kamsky and Nakamura play it, so it is playable. Here is a series of 12 videos that cover it. Each video is about 10 minutes.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2A81DE3CC341D860

The basic idea is white plays (not necessarily in this order) d4, Bf4, Nf3, e3, Ne2, c3, Be2 or Bd3, and usually h3. There are a number of plans depending what black does. Sometimes you play 0-0, sometimes 0-0-0, sometimes you don't castle. Sometimes you push your kingside pawns for an attack, sometimes you play c4 and push your queenside pawns. Sometimes it's just slow maneuvering for a long time.

d4 is the easy move. It's the stuff that comes after that gets complicated.