When Repertoires Collide...(Barrish vs. Shankland, Exchange Slav)

GM Illingworth

Apr 7, 2020, 7:54 AM | 6

One of the most common questions that people ask me nowadays is a version of 'Should I buy this book?' or 'What is your idea against the repertoire in this book?'

For over a year, I didn't buy many chess books, since I was not playing chess competitively anymore, and I also found that I could find the answers to any opening position using the tools I already had.

However, a big part of running a successful chess community is to be in the discussion of other chess improvers, and that also includes being familiar with the resources they are studying!

That's part of what was going through my mind when, less than 24 hours ago, I bought two of the newest Chessable opening courses:

1. The Principled Queen's Gambit: Part 1 by FM Daniel Barrish
2. Lifetime Repertoires: Semi-Slav by GM Sam Shankland

Yeah, I indeed worked through 2 chess ebooks, in full, in less than 24 hours. Well, many of my group members were asking me about these resources, so this was an emergency situation

For those who just want to know whether to buy these opening courses, I don't think it will be a big surprise: I really liked both of them! OK, I am only basing this on the moves and variations, since I didn't study the textual explanations, FM Barrish's course has just over 140,000 words though, while GM Shankland's has just shy of 40,000 words, meaning you have guidance in understanding why the suggested moves actually work!

In the old days, people often dismissed authors who were not of Grandmaster strength, but with strong engines, databases and other resources being freely available, you don't have to be a Grandmaster to write a great opening book, and Barrish (among others) proved it with his course.

Now for the comparison between the two repertoires. There are actually two comparisons, since Barrish gives two different options against the Slav Defence:

I'll start by comparing the differences between Barrish's and Shankland's Exchange Slav coverage, as this is an easier comparison. Shankland actually titled his Exchange Slav chapter 'The Dreaded Slav Exchange', presumably in reference to many Black players fearing that, with an extra tempo in a symmetrical position, White can play for a win without any risk of a loss.

I know from my own experience that this is not entirely true, but this reputation does very much justify the decision to include the Exchange Slav as an alternative. In fact, this variation helped me to start a GM round-robin strongly and achieve my second GM norm:

Shankland recommends the modern Chebanenko approach of 6...a6 instead, intending 7.Be2 (to avoid the annoying 7.Nf3 Bg4! pin) 7...e6 8.Nf3 Nh5!?, going after the f4-bishop before White can try to use his faster development to take the initiative. After 9.Be5 e6 10.0-0 Be7, Shankland covers 11.h3, while Barrish instead recommends 11.Rc1 0-0 12.Na4.

This variation interested me greatly, so I went deeper with my own analysis, which you can find below:

Fortunately, the comparison for the Semi-Slav analysis is a lot simpler. Barrish recommends the following mainline approach for White:

The engine prefers White in this position, but to Barrish's credit, he acknowledges that, with only one White pawn still on the board, the position is just a draw. Since White can't force a tangible advantage out of the opening anyhow after best play, having the sunny side of a draw like this is a very reasonable 'worst-case scenario'.

Shankland goes deeper, recommending 29...fxg4 instead (which also seemed the more natural move to me when I was studying Barrish's course, though the games in my database all went ...hxg4). Shankland goes a bit deeper but comes to the same conclusion, showing how Black can pressure or eliminate the a2-pawn to secure the draw.

It's worth pointing out that Barrish intends to update his repertoire every 3 months for the first year since publication (which was just over a week ago as I write this). That's a nice touch as it will allow for other people's ideas (such as what I shared here) to be potentially incorporated later.

With this post, I've aimed to show you how I go about studying chess, answering my group members' questions through my own research and experience, and also demonstrate how to expand on other people's work to develop your own ideas and improve your overall understanding through analysis and inquiry (asking good questions).

What I have found, in my experience, is that the quality of chess discussion, and thus, subsequent learning, is much higher when you have strong players and passionate, engaged amateurs in the discussion. You can check my Facebook profile posts for a good example.

The way I maximize the quality of the discussions in my private chess group 'The Chess Improvement Group' is by charging a small monthly fee for membership. So that the group members have some skin in the game - they've made a financial commitment toward becoming a better chess player!

You can sign up to my free Chess Improvement email list (and then get the offer to join my private chess group) through this link here.

Are you already signed up to my email list, and want to join with one click?

Then you can go directly to the offer to join us here.

We already have one other GM, many IMs and a correspondence SIM in the group, and we'd love for you to be our next member

See you in the group!

When Repertoires Collide...(Barrish vs. Shankland, Exchange Slav)

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