Played a game couple days ago, with d4 and the guy hit me with f5!
What?! I'd never seen this before. I thought this guy is nuts...what a bizarre response! So I just winged it, trying to develop. Later when I looked, it said the Dutch!
I see GM Simon Williams wrote a book on it - The Killer Dutch and another book, the Diamond Dutch by some Ukrainian GM.
Is this defense by Black sound? Or just a marketing tool or something strange like the Bird? Anyone use this regularly?
Thanks for any input.
I'm surprised you've never faced it before. As you've now found, it has found some success at the GM level, so I would certainly call it "sound." It's not played too often, but it's still good to know some ideas that you can play against it as white. Namely, you can get a good center and activate your pieces quickly.
The main ideas are of the Dutch are to focus your pieces on controlling the e4 square, eventually going for a kingside attack. The main drawback of course is that by playing f5, you are opening up a crucial diagonal towards your (eventual) king.
Thanks, NNA. Yessir, saw that it can open attacks by B and Q to the Black King. That's why at first I thought it was unsound.
Read online that Nakamura uses it often, though he's about the only super GM to do so.
I wouldn't have thought that White's best 2nd move is to slam that Bg5 in there, expecting to get chased. (according to StockFish anyway. Wonder if the same move for Alpha Zero?)
Think I'll order that Diamond Dutch book.
It's completely false that Naka is the only super GM to play the Dutch, although it's completely true that certain lines of the Dutch fit well with his style. The Dutch is often tried by disillusioned former (or even current) KID players when they have to play for a win as black.
I don't know why you've been convinced that Stockfish analysis on move two of any position is worth anything. 2. Bg5 is a playable move, but if it were clearly the best move, all the world's top players would play it. After 1. d4 f5 white has many, many options. The main stuff is to play with Nf3, g3+Bg2, 0-0, and c4 in some order. Against this black has three setups within the Dutch which are different types of Dutch defenses. They are very different from each other and to imply that the Dutch is in itself one defense with one character to it is quite incorrect.
The most common of those setups is the Stonewall, which is common because it can be reached, structurally anyway, through a number of move orders and even different openings (notably the Triangle Slav). The Stonewall consists of black pawns on e6, c6, and d5 in addition to his pawn already on f5. The black bishop will likely go to either d6 or e7. In such a position black's dark bishop is vastly better than his very passive light bishop, hence all the main lines for white are attempts to trade the dark bishops. Despite it being a Dutch Defense, and despite the fact that if white plays incompetently black can play some silly plan with Rf6-h6 and bringing the queen to the h-file trying to mate white, black's position is objectively quite passive. The Stonewall has been played by players like Magnus Carlsen, who excels at playing passive positions with cramped structures which are solid enough not to be losing, and who can sit around and make no mistakes for a very long time until the opponent cracks. Nakamura doesn't play too many Stonewalls.
There is also the Leningrad, where black plays completely differently, with g6-Bg7 instead of e6, and Nf6-d6-0-0. In this line black will try very hard to play e7-e5 as a break and white will try to break open the center or queenside while black is trying to do this. There are some very aggressive lines where black plays the positionally suspect Nc6?! with the idea to meet d5 with Ne5 and allow the doubling of his pawns on the e-file. The Leningrad is not a bad opening, but like anything else apart from the very cream of the crop (Nimzo, Berlin sorts of openings), no super GM plays the Leningrad all the time vs d4, and a lot play it occasionally.
The final setup is the Classical Dutch which involves black developing with e6-d6-Be7-Nf6-0-0 and this is the sort of plan Simon Williams likes to play. Black will again play for e5, maybe for f5-f4 if white has a pawn on g3, will play Qe8-h5 and in certain lines will try to attack white on the kingside if white does nothing. I am of the opinion that this line has certain theoretical issues if white plays for a quick e4, opening the position, but that doesn't mean it's not playable well beyond my level. In this line especially black needs to be concerned about white opening the position with e2-e4 because this will make his e6-pawn very weak if black has to respond fxe4.
But white also doesn't have to play Nf3-g3-Bg2. White can play the Hopton Variation with 2. Bg5, which is a perfectly good variation although one which black will almost certainly be prepared for. My favorite line against the Dutch is 2. Nc3, with the idea to meet passive moves with 3. e4, and to meet 2...Nf6 with 3. Bg5 in Rossolimo-style. On another site IM Thomas Rendle has made a number of videos about this way of playing. Finally white has the gambit 2. e4!? which may or may not be sound.
Unfortunately many players who play the Dutch do so without playing 1...f5. For example a Leningrad player who will play d6+g6 in his setup may answer 1. d4 with 1...g6 (or 1...d6), and thus 2. Nc3 and 2. Bg5 lose a little bit of their power, while 2. e4 is a Modern Defense which presumably black is okay playing. Similarly a Stonewall player is very likely to meet 1. d4 with 1...e6, avoiding Bg5 lines completely and allowing for a transposition into the French with 2. e4 d5. I've known quite a number of players who play the French against e4 and the Stonewall against d4. In general, this puts the onus on white, if he plays some other system like Nc3 or Bg5 in the 1...f5 move order, to be able to deal with a transposition back into the Dutch.
Because the lines where white plays g3-Bg2-Nf3-0-0-c4 are the most common by far, and because black has three distinct ways of responding to that setup, making general statements about the Dutch is like making general statements about the Sicilian; since black has a number of different systems, we should focus on those systems themselves and not on black's position after one move. But like in the Sicilian, white has a number of Anti-Dutch ways to play after 1...f5, and the idea of playing Bg5, either after 2. Nc3 or even on move two after 2...Nf6, is a very good one and mirrors the Nf3-Bb5 Anti-Sicilian (probably the best Anti-Sicilian). Unlike the Sicilian, black's king is a little weak from this opening, and it means that if white achieves the break e2-e4 and black plays fxe4, white's central pawn disadvantage is well more than compensated by black's weaknesses in the center and near his king. And finally, uniquely, black can transpose into the Dutch in a variety of ways.
I really would not recommend buying a book on the Dutch unless you really want to play one of the lines I mentioned yourself, in which case you should know which type of Dutch the author is recommending. Furthermore, seeing as you are a 1500-type player on lichess, I really don't think you should be spending any money on opening resources at all. What I have told you above should be sufficient to play the main lines against the Dutch at your level, but if you want to play one of the Anti-Dutch lines, like 2. Bg5, it would only take a little bit of playing around with the lichess database to get a feel for what you should be doing.
Of course it is sound.
It was played in matches Alekhine-Euwe and Bronstein-Botvinnik for the World Championship.
Look who plays it regularly
^The above is obviously an example of the Stonewall variation that I mentioned, where black normally should be a little worse for a while. But the way you win, if you're Magnus, is you don't do much of anything and you let white overpress (even though this particular game wasn't the best example, since black kind of equalized earlier than usual. not a great example of Fabi's usual excellent prep). And it works quite well when you're Magnus Carlsen and the opponent isn't, which is typically the case for Magnus unless he's playing on his app.
That last example showed a game where black was slightly worse for the entirety of the game and then comes up with the stunning move 33... Qd1+. It's a great finish, but I'm not sure how that shows off the dutch beyond saying "hey look - Magnus can beat anyone."
It's not that stunning, since either it or Rxf6 is forced. Magnus may have seen both and played the cooler one, or more likely it was his plan when he took the first rook. Games require calculation, this is nothing new.