From the Journal: 14 Sep. 2024

I've been playing the Queen's Gambit Declined as my defense to 1.d4 lately. It started with the realization that various openings are, in fact, specialized versions of others: the first example which provoked this insight being the Alekhine-Chatard Attack against the French Defense, which I was trying to play without having first mastered the variation beginning with 6.Bxe7. It occurred to me that the Alekhine-Chatard Attack is based on themes and concepts more directly addressed in 6.Bxe7, and adds more complexity to them, making them more difficult to assimilate. Then I realized that the Slav Defense, and especially the Semi-Slav Defense, shared a similar relationship with the QGD—and this gave me the strong urge to the latter for a while.

So far, I have found that most of my peers who play the Queen's Gambit have no idea what they are doing and sabotage themselves, especially in the TMB system. Otherwise, they play a bland version of the 4.Bf4 Queen's Gambit. So far I have only faced the Exchange Variation twice: once as a pure QGD and once from the main Semi-Slav tabiya. This is truly difficult to handle, especially against a player who knows his stuff.

I can tell why people feel that the QGD is so dry: already I have started to itch for the Semi-Slav again. But I am going to waith until I have played the QGD for three months at a bare minimum, and preferably until I win a serious game defending against the Exchange Variation before I try the Semi-Slav again.
† Glory be to God! Amen. †

This post was originally posted on the chess blog Eighth Rank Chess and has been re-published here on Lichess with the permission of the original author or copyright holder.