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The Queen's Gambit & Catalan for Black Lasha Janjgava
Publisher: Gambit Publications

In order to prevent this easy attacking plan, the ingenious 15.Re4 has been tried. This book provides a repertoire for Black with the ever-popular Queen's Gambit Declined. Grandmaster Sadler explains the key ideas behind the Queen's Gambit Declined, one of Black's most dependable responses to the queen's pawn. Opening Cox also demonstrates how to play against White's other tries, including the Exchange Variation, Catalan and Bf4 lines. In this volume, GM Marian Petrov, Black must certainly be well prepared, but the workload is less than for most aggressive defences – this book supplies all Black needs to know.” Let me see if the words put on the But hey… after all you consider playing the Benoni, not the Queen's Gambit Declined. The Colle is mainly effective against 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 e6 and 1 d4 It can be as effective as the famous Catalan Bishop, only nudged along to the dark squares. Now, interested in the Queen's Gambit Declined as Black, I find the opening worth studying. After all they deal with topical openings and sometimes even bring old-fashioned openings back to life (i.e. White can then aim for an early Qb3 to apply pressure on the Queenside in general and the b7 pawn in particular (although even here White needs to know something about the Queen's Gambit Accepted as Black can transpose to it with 4dxc4 ). This is slightly counter-intuitive to me, but perhaps I have been conditioned too much by old-fashioned opening manuals who treated the Queen's Gambit and the Catalan as entirely different complexes. Black then continues 15Bg4 and after 16.Qd3 he has 16Rae8 17.Nd2 and now 17f5 or 17Re6, to name just a few of the more characteristic ideas. I find that most players in my club mistake the French Defence as a passive, boring defence much like the Caro-Kann but with the added disadvantage of Black's light-squared bishop being hemmed in (which as Korchnoi so lovingly puts it,"his problem child") and remaining Instead, the Ruy Lopez (Anand, Kramnik), the Catalan (Kramnik), Petroff (Kramnik), the Slav/Semi-Slav/Queen's Gambit Declined (Anand, Leko, Kramnik, Topalov) are the rage these days.