“When I am White I win because I am White, when I am Black I win
because I am Bogoljubow.” – Efim Bogoljubow.
I’m still thinking about this, so bear with me, and comments
invited…
I pounced on Nunn’s Chess Openings when it came out, and
found some things that I found puzzling. Openings like the
Dutch Stonewall, which I had always thought of as being
fundamentally flawed, were being shown as equal, while
the Classical Dutch – which I thought was a superior approach – was coming out as +=.
Firstly, why did I think that the Dutch Stonewall was so
flawed? Earlier in my life, I had devoured the Euwe/Kramer
books on The Middle Game. Not unlike 1066 and
all that, I learned lots of Important Ideas like Isolated
Queen’s Pawns and Bad Bishops which were worth writing down in
Capital Letters. If you played the Dutch Stonewall as Black,
you had a Bad Bishop and White could start in with a Queen’s Side
Attack, perhaps even a Minority Attack. I also learned that
if you had only one Bishop, you placed your pawns on the Opposite
Colour to your Bishop, leaving its lines of action free.
So, for example, in the Bogo-Indian, after …Bb4 and an exchange
of dark-squared Bishops, a very logical plan for Black was …d6
and …e5, challenging in the centre on the dark squares, and
releasing the light-squared Bishop on c8.
Imagine my confusion, when reading Nunn et al., to see that the
lines of the Bogo-Indian with …d6 and …e5 were generally given
as +=, while Black seemed to have better chances of equality with
Ulf Andersson’s favourite …d7-d5, leaving the central
pawns on light squares, and obstructing our remaining Bishop.
I’m still thinking about this, but needing some sort of
explanation, I reached for these ideas:
a. After …e6-e5 and d4-d5, how strong is Black’s claim to have
a Good Bishop? After all, where can it go? In the game
Pedersen-Shkapenko (GM 2007), we reached this position:
We can see that the Bishop on each side can only go
backwards! The fact that Black’s Bishop has a choice of
retreats does not seem very relevant to me! This position
can be better understood by thinking about the rest of the pieces,
and it seems as though White’s space and centralised Knights offer
a plus. The Knight on d3 looks especially well-placed,
supporting pawn breaks on both sides of the board. White can
look forward to arranging c5 at leisure.
b. When you play …d7-d5. White has a pawn on c4.
After an exchange of pawns, new career prospects appear for the
Bc8. White can stop this only by c4-c5, but then Black has
ideas of …b6 and/or …e5, both of which attack White’s pawns
and release the Bc8.
c. In Queen’s Pawn Openings, after …e6-e5 and d4-d5, White has
a natural plan of pushing forward on the Queen’s-side, with moves
like b4 and c5. …d7-d5 concedes less space on the
Queen’s-side, and importantly, doesn’t hand White a simple plan of
campaign. That feels quite a good explanation to me.
d. One last consideration: Black often has a small lead in
development, which is used better by playing …d5 quickly than
…d6 and …e5 slowly. In the Nimzo-Indian, White is often
embarrassed by Black’s quick …d7-d5 break, even though in the
long run White will want to open up the position for the two
Bishops. Black can castle and get in …d5 before White has
touched any of the King’s-side pieces. In the Bogo-Indian,
White might not have the Bishop pair, but the time factor could
still be relevant. I’m not sure how important this idea is
in every line; we’d probably need to look at some variations.
Overlapping explanations might help us to understand the Dutch
Stonewall. There Black has some claim to be the side with
more space, and White’s allegedly Good Bishop on g2 seems to have
just as poor career prospects as Black’s on c8. So again,
simply interpreting the position through the most obvious
difference – the effect of the pawn structure on one pair of
pieces – was Too Simple. That is very definitely a Bad
Thing.
“The Euwe books are very good for beginners. But after a
while I began to think that everything Euwe wrote was a lie!” —
Bent Larsen.
To be honest, if the Bogo-Indian ever turns up on my board, I’ll
still be strongly drawn to …d6 and …e5. As much as it
hands White a plan, it also gives a position where I think I also
know what I’m supposed to be doing. After …d5, even if the
position is more equal, I’d feel more at a loss as to what to do!