11 Comments

Good Luck with prepping and with the tournament. Nice approach.

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An interesting post. Thanks!

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Against 1.d4 the Gruenfeld leaves black satisfied to many GMs.

Thanks for the article and good play I the venue :)

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KID is my fav against d4

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What about the Chessable KIS for Black repertoire by Sielecki ? The answer to 1.d4 is the QGD based on 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 a6.

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Good luck with the tournament! I hope you do well! For me against d4, I feel pretty comfortable playing a Semi-Slav Defense. I enjoy the positions that follow and the engine gives Black equal play no matter what White plays.

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An interesting surprise weapon against 1. d4 is the english rat defense, I'm not sure if you can learn it in one month though. . .

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What is the English Rat???

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Nice post.

Periodization is something I'm familiar with - but not in the domain of chess haha.

I may be a bit biased - but I've always felt the Nimzo is one of the easiest ways to combat 1.d4 given its flexibility (though as you mentioned in another post - you still need to figure out what to do when White avoids it).

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Interesting... I always felt like the Nimzo is a great opening, but hard to learn because there are so many different structures.

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Aug 6, 2023
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These are certainly great openings, what many of the best engines will do if you just let them play their top choice. I struggle with the work/reward of learning the Nimzo, but it's certainly a great opening.

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