The Queen’s Gambit
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Simple explanation? Anyone?
1d4 ...d5 2c4
Jan 12, 2021
0
#4
If black takes black spends all his time battling to keep the pawn and avoid falling behind in development or taking a tactical hit. If he does not take, white has a small but tangible lead in the center. It is one of the hardest openings for black, at least according to my opening database black loses more often than not either way. I will play QGA in fast games because most QG players at lower levels forget you can take it and haven't prepped well. And I like the marshall variation if playing more seriously.
Here is a wild approach to it -- I missed move 7 and got into trouble, this is the corrected move 7. You can't rely on white to get into this kind of trouble usually, though. But you can see how fast the game can go off course -- either side can quickly make an attack.
Jan 12, 2021
0
#5
jonnin wrote:
If black takes black spends all his time battling to keep the pawn and avoid falling behind in development or taking a tactical hit. If he does not take, white has a small but tangible lead in the center. It is one of the hardest openings for black, at least according to my opening database black loses more often than not either way. I will play QGA in fast games because most QG players at lower levels forget you can take it and haven't prepped well. And I like the marshall variation if playing more seriously.
Great answer. One small note is that QGA still works very well in classical as it's still pretty sound! It's especially effective when they have no idea what they're doing as you stated 
I used to use it a lot very sound
jonnin wrote:
If black takes black spends all his time battling to keep the pawn and avoid falling behind in development or taking a tactical hit. If he does not take, white has a small but tangible lead in the center. It is one of the hardest openings for black, at least according to my opening database black loses more often than not either way. I will play QGA in fast games because most QG players at lower levels forget you can take it and haven't prepped well. And I like the marshall variation if playing more seriously.
Here is a wild approach to it -- I missed move 7 and got into trouble, this is the corrected move 7. You can't rely on white to get into this kind of trouble usually, though. But you can see how fast the game can go off course -- either side can quickly make an attack.
Honestly, most queen's gambit players as white play against the queen's gambit accepted at lower levels repeatedly, and can start to find checkmate patterns in under 20 moves.
I'm wondering if the queen's gambit is therefore even a decent opening for white as a beginner? As opposed to e4.
Jan 13, 2021
0
#8
I'm wondering if the queen's gambit is therefore even a decent opening for white as a beginner? As opposed to e4.
E4 isnt any safer for a beginner. There are at least 4-5 totally different games that e4 player has to be ready for and black only has to prep one of them -- black chooses the game vs e4. The first response in my database against d4 that has black winning more than white is a6? which has < 200 games (there are ~ half a million games for both nf6 & d5). e4 has french, scandanavian, sicillian, king's pawn, and caro kahn with over 100k and all with reasonable black win %s which are all rather different from each other. I can't say that e4 is easier at all ...
