Queensgambit is free win for White

Btw, how do you manage to play white 17 times in a row?

Uhm tough question . I also play the Queensgambit with black i guess :/

What are you guys arguing about? They are all equally good in my opinion. It's just a matter of taste.

If GMs play them regularly, then they are equally good!

I know that theory suggests that with best play by black in the main variations white obtains at most a minor advantage, a view no doubt validated by extensive perusal of grandmaster games, but at less exalted levels I believe there is a lot to be said for INM Brahsen's view. Bobby Fischer once wrote that playing the Ruy Lopez for white was like 'milking a cow', meaning that the attack almost plays itself. I think that at intermediate and even advanced levels the same is true of the Queens Gambit.

By way of illustration I post here a daily on-line game played yesterday between myself (as white) and an opponent rated much lower than myself with whom I regularly play because we are friends in the real non-chess, non-digital world as well. He is around 1300. I am currently approaching 1700 but am still undefeated in this format and still have a high Glicko factor. What is important here is not the difference between our respective chess abilities or the fact that I won, but the consummate ease with which the Queens Gambit (rather than me) destroys her opponent here. 

You will see that this game starts off with 1.Nf3 but quickly transposes into a QGD, albeit with my opponent dropping one tempo after committed his queen's pawn to d6 before moving it forward to d5. Having surprised even myself with the ferocity of the white attack I may have to reconsider 1.d4 again as my opening move of choice, though of course I realise that I will face much stiffer opposition with better QG players.

Just a note to add that of course black can win defending the Queens Gambit but against someone who understands it well you need to have a thorough understanding of it yourself. I hope INM Brahsen will agree that for us poor patzers (I include myself here - my own FIDE rating is even less than his own which is 789) it is much better to understand the general principles of defending the QGD that simply memorising lines and that it is useful to play through well annotated games of the world's best players that are most especially instructive. To this end I give you here Lasker vs. Capablanca in which Capa shows just how to neutralise the white attack and turn on its main weakness, the isolated queen's pawn, eventually blocking it with another pawn and forcing white to lose the coordination of his pieces defending it.

Of course there are very few, if any, of us who are fit to clean Capablanca's pawns here, and as INM Brahsen notes the QG is particularly effective against those players below the 2000 range. It is, however, instructive to see how the great and the good have dealt with it.

Looking over this game carefully, readers may see that any of Lasker's threats early on in the game (certainly real enough but all ably neutralised by Capablanca's characteristically exceptionally accurate play) focus, as they did in my own game, on the mobility of white's isolated queen's pawn, the c-file, the sixth rank and the diagonal running from b3 to g8 (particularly the threat of sacrifice on e6). This is not to compare our game in any way with that of these two greats in terms of levels of play (which are a yawning chasm apart) but rather to argue that the QGD does quite clearly produce themes that reoccur, and to reiterate INM Brahsen's (convincing in my view) thesis that, unless black is very strong or well prepared (and most of us at less exalted levels are not), white's attack almost plays itself.

Finally, note that Nunn et al. (eds.) The Mammoth Book of Greatest Chess Games (or whatever it's called) reproduces this game (the Capablanca game, not mine!) with some very interesting commentary by one of the editors (Burgess, I think).

The queens gambit frustrated me until I learned the Slav defense. Even in low level chess, if the opponent of white knows the Slav as well as the other knows the queens g, the game is a toss up. I favor the Slav

Meaning, I presume, that, au contraire, the black counter-attack in the Queens Gambit is very hard to stop when played by intermediate to advanced level players by virtue of the more or less intuitive nature of the strategic and tactical themes that emerge in black's game (much as I have suggested that these manifest themselves in this way for white).

I'd love to see some examples, Teichmann70, played out between reasonably competent players within the 1500-2000 rating rate. If you (or indeed others) have any of your own Queens Gambit games (assuming that your FIDE or ECF rating equivalent falls into that area) that you are willing to share, I'd be genuinely interested to look over them only with the benign intention of my learning something about the suitability of openings for players in this general category (and not, I hasten to add, with the malign intentions of a troll). As noted above I tend towards INM Brahsen's view but I am anything but dogmatic and am ready to be shown otherwise if I am presented with appropriate evidence.

@ kstrong - Yes, I suspect that the Slav offers a more sturdy resistance to d4 than the Classical QG Declined systems focused on 2. ... e6 against which not much more than a notion of general principles and a fair wind will take you a long way at club level. Interesting that your results picked up after moving away from the QGD.

@ oneshotveth - I've seen enough of INM Brahsen's more expansive posts focused on the specifcs of chess theory to be entirely sure that he would crush a 1500 underfoot like a beetle online, live or OTB, though having seen that he registered his account under the Bhutan flag suggesting Buddhist leanings and perusing his current avatar, I suspect that he may not like that particular image. I wonder if we may not construe his wish to decline the 1500's offer as a case of not wishing to be trolled by the chat facility during the course of an entire game. 

thanks for posting here guys, i am in France atm so didnt write a lot. I dont decline any challenge, i just played against someone rated 1300. the slav is a good choice against the queensgambit but i still feel that on the lower or advanced levels whites play is so simple in this opening that its hard to lose and the chances of winning are pretty high.

if u wanna know any concrete tips or lines on the queensgambit just ask, i play most of them.

great pros, Karpark. If you don't write for a living, you should. It's refreshing. I have had better results with the Slav vs QGD, but will look into QGD to see why that is.