The Dutch Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves: Black's 1...f5 stakes a claim to the e4-square and envisions an attack in the middlegame on White's ; however, it also weakens Black's kingside some. Like its 1.e4 counterpart, the Sicilian Defence, the Dutch is an aggressive and unbalancing opening, resulting in the lowest percentage of draws among the most common replies to 1.d4. Historically, White has tried many methods to exploit the kingside weaknesses, such as the Staunton Gambit and Korchnoi Attack. The Dutch has never been a main line against 1.d4 and is rarely seen today in high-level competition, although a number of top players, including Alexander Alekhine, Bent Larsen, Paul Morphy, and Miguel Najdorf, have used it with success. Its most notable use may have been in 1951, when both world championMikhail Botvinnik and his challenger, David Bronstein, played it in their 1951 World Championship match.
History
, an Alsatian who settled in The Hague, recommended the defense as the best reply to 1.d4 in his 1789 book Nouvel essai sur le Jeu des échecs, avec des réflexions militaires relatives à ce jeu. Siegbert Tarrasch rejected the opening as unsound in his 1931 work The Game of Chess, arguing that White should reply with the Staunton Gambit, with White being better after 2.e4 fxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 c6 5.f3 exf3.
Theory
White most often fianchettoes his king's bishop with g3 and Bg2. Black also sometimes fianchettoes his king's bishop with...g6 and...Bg7, but may instead develop his bishop to e7, d6, or b4. Play often runs 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 e6 4.Nf3 4...Be7 5.0-0 0-0 6.c4 and now Black chooses between 6...d5, 6...d6, the Ilyin-Zhenevsky Variation, or Alekhine's move 6...Ne4!? retaining the option of moving the d-pawn either one or two squares. The opening's attacking potential is shown in the Polish Immortal, in which Miguel Najdorf, using the Stonewall Variation, sacrificed all of his to win by checkmate.
Practitioners
The Stonewall Dutch enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the 1980s and 1990s, when leading grandmastersArtur Yusupov, Sergey Dolmatov, Nigel Short and Simen Agdestein helped develop the system where Black plays an earlier...d5 and places his dark-squared bishop on d6. Termed the Modern Stonewall, this setup has remained more popular than the traditional early...Be7. Magnus Carlsen has used the Stonewall to score wins against Viswanathan Anand and Fabiano Caruana. The Ginger GM, Simon Williams, is one of the leading practitioners of the classical Dutch and has created several courses on it as well as having written more than one book on the opening.
White continuations
The traditional move order involves White playing 2.c4. More commonly, White will start with 2.g3. Some common variations are: c4 is played after g3 and Bg2; c4 is played after Nf3; and c4 is played after 0-0. Examples:
Carl Mayet introduced a completely different gambit approach to the Dutch in 1839 against von der Lasa, playing 2.h3 followed by 3.g4. Von der Lasa later published analysis of this line in the first edition of the Handbuch des Schachspiels. Viktor Korchnoi, one of the world's leading players, reintroduced the line into tournament practice in Korchnoi–Känel, Biel1979. GM Christiansen later concluded, as von der Lasa and Staunton had done over 140 years earlier, that Black could get a good game by declining the gambit with 2...Nf6 3.g4 d5!
Black sometimes starts with the move-order 1...e6 to avoid these lines, although Black must then be ready to play the French Defense if White continues 2.e4, rendering the Dutch no longer an option.
''ECO''
The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings has twenty codes for the Dutch Defence, A80 through A99.
