Queen's Gambit Accepted

Hi,

I have been playing the Queen's Gambit Accepted (QGA) for a couple weeks with Black.  The opening is about taking white's c4 pawn on move 2:  1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4

Of course, you cannot hold onto the pawn,  But I have found that clarifying the center early allows Black to develop the pieces easier.  Then hit back at the center with ...c5 or ...e5 pawn breaks.  or play ..e5 on move 3 (1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e4 e5)

I was wondering why the QGA is not very popular in the GM levels?  It seems that GMs would rather play the Queen's Gambit Declined (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6) or the Slav (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6) than choose the QGA?  Rublevsky is a 2700 super GM that plays the QGA and Kramnik has used to the Slav to transpose to a QGA during his Topalov matches.  But why is the QGA not very popular ? 

Regards,

It is played now and then. I remember Svidler holding Aronian to a very easy draw with QGA.

lol I just made a similar thread on this. Feel free to check that out for more info.

Kasparov, Ponomariov, Anand, Fischer, Sadler, Seirawan, and Rublevsky spearheaded a movement to make the QGA the opening of the new millenium.

QGA is great, Its bad reputation comes from people that dont understand that 1 d4 d5 2 c4 is not a blunder.

My take on why it is not a consistant defense to d4 for top players over 2600 is that when black plays for the c5 break the pawn structure often becomes symetrical. If I am a top GM I dont want to draw a 2500 because he has white and I have no way to make the game unclear.

QGA is just like grunfeld

except bishop is not fianchettoed

#brooklyndodgers

#blood

Holy water come rescue me

The QGA is great: simply, easy and reliable. Your pieces get good positions, and you don't need to know much theory.

I think the reason why it is not played all that much at top level is that it does not give the opponent much room to go wrong, it just sets up solidly against the mainline and let's white go around their business.

Second, it doesn't really allow black room to prep a game winning novelty somewhere. Although, white has more chances for some pawn sac (usually connected with d5), so it does put them at risk of prep.

Well, your pieces have good squares, so it's definitely possible for your opponent to go wrong.

But from the perspective of vry high level players, positions need to be very complex positionally or tacticaly to elicit a mistake. I don't think the QGA has enough positional/tactical complexity for a super Gm player to pressure their opponent into making the absolute best moves.

By comparison the more popular systems- semi slav, gruenfeld and nimzo are all very complex both strategically and tactically. This generally ties in with the prep idea as well, because more complex positions allow for more dangerous prepration.

Of course it's just a theory, I have no idea what is going on inside the minds of 2700+ players, for all I know they may favour the semi slav for some silly reason such as because triangles are their favourite shape, lol.

#raffael