Is the Dutch defese good?

It's not really "good" but most things are playable and it can be fun so maybe it doesn't matter.

To ask if any opening is good is rather a double edged sword and any answer is dependent on a number of things.

I will say this though, as long as you avoid 1.d4 f5 and use the Dutch via transposition, it is as ibrust says "playable"

The Dutch is both risky and ambitious. It's risky because White has many ways to be slightly better (at least it's what Stockfish seems to think) and when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong. It's ambitious because it can lead to tactical complications and because it usually aims for a kingside attack.

There are also three main variations of the Dutch: the Classical, the Stonewall and the Leningrad which is the sharpest and seems to me the most played in highest level at the moment: Nakamura and Nepomniachtchi are known to play it regularly, at least in blitz. Carlsen is known to have played the Stonewall though.

The Leningrad is also my choice: I restarted to play it this April and I've had slightly worse results with it than with ...d5 aiming for Semi-Tarrasch or Tartakower. But on other hand, I'm still relearning the opening (I bought Neiksans' course and I've been analysing the opening with Chessbase) and I've had much more fun since I've switched to the Dutch.

risky but more aggressive and fun

Dutch is a risky opening and can not be played against e4 but it is good opening but just be sure of traps as in this opening we move our weakest pawn

Ginger GM has pretty much proved that it can work against even GMs. As long as you're well-prepared for the plans it should be good. Except against me because I play the Hopton attack, killing a lot of the dutch player's fun.

Some of you make me laugh and not in a good way.

Any of you GM's?

Of course it playable .... and a decent defense if you know what you are doing.

"STOCKFISH doesn't think it's a good defense ..." that statement made me spit my coffee out!

No GM over the board can defeat these new engines!!!!

The Dutch defense is totally viable in all it's main lines... i.e The Classical, the Stonewall or the Lennigrad... Botvinnk used it, Short used it, Topolov used it, just to name a few ... I don't use it, but wouldn't hesitate if I had the time to pick up another defense.... certainly on my list if I grow bored of what I currently use.

"I don't use it, but..."

That sentence kind of says everything.

The GMs you listed either played the dutch occasionally as a winning weapon knowing it's very unstable, not as a main weapon... or are very old / dead. They also happen to play just about every defense in the book, they're universal players. Meanwhile, many GMs you didn't mention spent long periods of time trying to make it work as a main weapon, then gave up and now recommend against it... Nakamura, Korchnoi, others. Furthermore... usually when GMs do play it at high level they're not playing via 1... f5, which is what the OP is doing - but rather 1... e6 or other move orders.

The apprehension toward the dutch isn't merely based on some flat reading of the engine eval, that's just your shallow assumption based on no experience in the line, it's the super vulnerable king and 6 different chaotic opening lines where black has to cling to survival. If he does make it into the middle game or late game... his king remains exposed and tactics for white abound indefinitely. The benefit of controlling e4 with a pawn does not really compensate for this. In a must-win situation or against a much lower rated opponent where a chaotic game is what you want this might be okay... but as a main weapon it's hard to justify. If you have admittedly not played the defense there is no reason anyone should take your opinion of it seriously, and the fact you'd presume to lecture people about it... well that is something worth laughing at, and not in a good way.

I guess it would be nice if this fantasy where every opening move was just as equally good as every other move were a reality, it's like PC for chess openings, but that just isn't the reality.

Keep trying

"STOCKFISH doesn't think it's a good defense ..." Who said that? Don't use quotation marks on what you write unless you are citing someone.

"Furthermore... usually when GMs do play it at high level they're not playing via 1... f5, which is what the OP is doing - but rather 1... e6 or other move orders." Do you have any statistics to back that up?

Once again....

To reiterate with point...

None of you are GMs, IMs and probably not even NMs...

So giving advice like you are... makes you look well......

Secondly... that long dead GM was a world champion named Botvinnik... who played it extensively. And... I recall Nigal Short playing the Stonwall Dutch extensively. .... Topolav played the Lennigrad var also exstensivly....

Moronic also to cite GMs using it in situation where they are looking to throw off another GM's prep...

YOU ARE NOT A GM, NOR IS ANYONE ELSE HERE A GM ...

Under 2500... one could play the same opening evey tournament for years ... and if they know what they are doing... the only thing that their game suffers from is self boardum. I FORGOT TO mention Simon Williams got his GM norms playing the Classical... (While being told the Classical is unsound)

AGAIN.... to give advice like your a titled player ... not a good look... Especially if you don't know what your talking about.

I’m starting to play it as a 1700 and of course haven’t been getting many 1.d4 games to practice in unrated. I kind of like the positions that arrive from the Dutch but since I don’t know what I’m doing yet I’m not scoring well. One thing I’ve noticed is that most people don’t have a plan for it and this results in whacky looking games. At least I can have a plan and try to stick with it for now, ie cover e4 and try to push e6. Maybe get a light squared fianchetto if they don’t. But it’s a lot of fun I can tell you that. I get excited to play d4 now.

Well I could have phrased that better, but 1. d4 f5 is played 1% of the time in that position, but in certain other positions such a 1. d4 e6 2. c4 b6 3. Nc3 Bb7 4. a6 f5 - here a dutch transposition is actually the most common move. Nonetheless you still have more total 1. d4 f5 games because 1. d4 is a much more common position than the petrosian setup. But by "play it at high level" I really mean its current state of theory where black is attempting to play it as a viable line, not just looking at the totals and counting its use in must-win situations where it's understood it's unsound but the player just hopes to get a chaotic game. I do think the 1. f5 move order is better suited as a winning weapon than 1... e6 because after 1... e6 white can go into the french exchange, where he gets a very drawish game. But when we talk about playing the dutch in a serious way this is where improvements are gained from transposing into it.

For example, when you reach the dutch via e6/b6 you can get favorable variations where white has accepted a pin on Nc3, or at least has committed his knight there. And here is the dutch used to avoid the QID petrosian setup -

Likewise when you reach the dutch via the traingle white has played Nc3 and e3, it's about +0.21 at that point whereas the mainline 1... f5 is about +0.30.

So these are theoretically more sound, more viable high level usages of the dutch.

Apparently repeating "you're not GM!" 8 times is what constitutes critical thinking about the opening for this person.

A vulnerable king and weak square complex is dangerous at low elo as well as high elo. What's actually moronic is your idea that logic about the opening somehow only becomes relevant once a player reaches titled status. If your king is weak... this effects the moves available to you and your opponent. Just a very simple glance at the distribution of winrates across openings at various elos confirms that the dutch is performing worse at lower elo compared with other openings... immediately disproving your suggestion that there is no difference. So we can just move on from this bad idea.

And not every game reaches the endgame, or remains close until the endgame... once you get a significant lead, assuming you aren't bad, you can generally hold on to it... we can tell by the statistics that this is also true at low elo - it's why gambits such as the Smith Morra have winrates in the 30% for white in certain lines even at low elo (i.e. 'below titled' according to your definition).

Btw - I don't think I'm interested in advice on the opening from a 1400 player. If you knew the opening well you'd be at least 1600.

Simon Williams openly acknowledges the dutch is dubious, he plays it anyway because he enjoys it... but he doesn't lie to himself about it.

It's interesting that you chose 2500 elo specifically as the cutoff considering you know nothing about play in that elo range.

When you compare openings at any elo you're dealing with relative differences in their effect on elo.

I see you've also suggested that we aren't capable of thinking critically about the opening until we're at a titled status... Only a complete dunce would ever suggest this. Please do not project and force your duncery onto me and others. Even if it were true, which it isn't... you would never reach titled status without going through the effort to think at a higher level, it's called using your brain and developing your thinking abilities.

And Botvinnik is from the pre-computer era, and Short used it largely as a winning weapon, which is what it's mostly suitable for today...

Btw you can find some GM playing every opening in the book, especially as you go back in history, but you would not therefor conclude that every opening in the book is equally viable, because that would just a completely retarded conclusion.

I know, your brain is about to explode, I understand.

@ibtrust I do agree that the Stonewall and Classical Dutch are objectively better with played as transpositions from 1...e6. That move order cuts also some sidelines like 2.Bg5. There is, of course, the contradiction that the Dutch might be played to win at all costs against a weaker opponent and the Exchange French being a drawish opening as you pointed out.

My question was about that move order being the most played on GM level, since the Leningrad seems like the most popular variation at that level, the point being that you play 1...f5 if you aim for the Leningrad. I took a look at top gm games with 1...f5 and some Dutch transpositions and it did not seem that these transpositions have been played more than 1...f5. That seems to be also the case for Dutch games in general if you include players of all levels, but I didn't have any way to look only at GM games and I was curious if you had done some research. My impression is that you might be right about the move order on gm level but only in regard for the Stonewall and the Classical Dutch.

As for evaluating intentions of players, the fact that there might be more who aim for favorable Dutch transpositions than who aim for the Dutch via 1...f5, is irrelevant since your claim was about the concrete games GMs are playing. You said "usually when GMs do play it at high level they're not playing via 1... f5, which is what the OP is doing - but rather 1... e6 or other move orders." Not "When they aim for Dutch, they prefer to transpose to it via"...

@APainerPaints No, that isn't my claim, because as I just generously took the time to clarify for you and will again - when I say to play the dutch in a "high level way" i mean the attempt to play it in a way that's theoretically sound, i.e. playing it as a main weapon according to the latest theory, not playing it as a winning weapon with the understanding it's dubious but just trying to avoid a draw or something.

And again, if a GM plays the triangle system with the intention of playing the dutch if his opponent plays e3, but his opponent doesn't play e3, does that show up in a raw counting of the games? No. But how many players consider transposing into the dutch via the triangle part of their repertoire...? Is it more or less than those playing the f5 line? So the point is you can't just straightforwardly compare totals from a move-4 transposition vs. totals in a move-1 position... it's not an equal comparison because there are far more games which reach the 1. d4 position compared with the move 4 position. It's much better to look at percentages - about 1-2% of 1. d4 games followup with f5, many of these are must-win situations i.e. not what I'm talking about, I am interested in the high-level games i.e. the state of dutch theory at high level. In some cases f5 is the main move in some move 4 positions... in the Petrosian setup it's played 56% of the time there. Can we therefor conclude that 56% of e6/b6 players intend on playing the dutch in that position? Something like that - hard to say exactly. The Leningrad is not considered really theoretically sound and viable at high level, I have never heard a GM suggest that. Can you name me any GM who believes that? Even people who played the dutch extensively, such a Nakamura and Simon Williams, have said many times that they don't believe it's sound. But when we talk about transpositions into the dutch... some of them are perfectly sound. That is my point, I hope I have clarified.

Carry onward!

"The Leningrad is not considered theoretically sound and viable at high level, I have never heard a GM actually suggest that."

Thank you for clarifying your point.

I do think that the Leningrad is slightly dubious as I've said it's slightly better for White and risky.

But there are GMs who believe that it is completely viable and it's not very hard to find them. Svidler has said it's very playable or very much viable to Jan Gustafsson on a stream and Kamsky has said literally it's a sound opening several times on his streams. But you that's their opinion not mine.

@APainerPaints I have not heard these claims... I would need to hear what they actually said - soundness is an objective measure whereas viability includes the human elements. I'm not sure how an engine would fare when playing the Leningrad but I am pretty confident the humans will do alot worse. It also sounds like these may be speculative claims - have any of these GMs played the Leningrad with success at high level and substantiated their belief?

I have often said that for every GM with an opinion there is some other GM with a contrary opinion, however I think even those GMs you mentioned would be forced to acknowledge that their opinion is controversial and most of their peers do not agree with their opinion.

And what about the moves leading up to the Leningrad - is Svidler including those positions in his assessment? The case is simplified when you cut out the moves required to reach the Leningrad.

@ibrust Neiksans might admit that but Kamsky is a big contrarian and doesn't seem to think what other players think (including about his frequent cheating accusations), though it seems that he uses the Leningrad mainly against weaker opponents.

It's Jan Gustafsson who thinks the Dutch is rubbish and Svidler who defended the Leningrad on the stream. It was about six or seven years ago. I think they talked about the dutch twice but didn't go to details.

Btw, some of the anti Dutch lines are considered less lethal than earlier. 2.Nc3 seems harmless when I look at the lines Neiksans gives in his course. 2.Bg5 should still have a lot of venom according to him and the modern answer to it is 2...g6 which is considered best but I think it is slightly better for white. English lines seem fine for black. The Dutch had a bad reputation earlier against the Reti, but recent opening theory suggests it's better than thought. White gets a small advantage though in many lines. Anti-Dutch gambits are not that good.

I think against 1...f5 2.Bg5 and the main lines involving 2.g3 are the most critical. I also have my own system against the Dutch including the unusual 2.e3, which you can look here and should give White a small plus. The variations I give score well in practice and computer also slightly prefers White.