Do any of y'all play the exchange variation of the QGD and put the knight on e2? I'm not familiar with the variation name, but here's the position.



It reminds me of the 5.Ne2 lines in the Nimzo, except white's bishop is outside of the pawn chain, which is a big plus. Kasparov played this variation quite a bit and had some really sharp, nice attacking games such as this one.

Kasparov-Campora 1988

The reason I'm curious is I'm getting a bit tired of playing against the typical QGD Tartakower or minority attack stuff and would like to mix things up a bit. If nothing else it would be good to have experience in a different QGD line.

Any thoughts or anecdotes from y'all would be great. Anyone know why this stuff isn't played as much anymore? It looks interesting and like a lot of fun.

It's definitely one of White's best options against the QGD. Although you have to be careful with the move orders. Many Black players will play 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 and only after 3.Nf3 play d5, thereby avoiding the exchange variation (you can still take on d5 but it's considered relatively harmless with the Knight committed to f3 so early).

There's also the move order trick 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Be7 which forces you to play the Bishop to f4 if you want to get into the exchange variation.

My antidote when I used to play the QGD as Black was:
1.d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. cxd5 exd5 6. e3 O-O 7. Bd3 c6 8. Nge2 Nbd7 9. Qc2 h6 10. Bh4 Ne8 which I did ok with, although White is still slightly better.

Thanks for the heads up on the move orders, I wouldn't have thought about some of those. I'm going to play around with this for a while and see what happens.

Do you play 1.d4? If so, what do you play against the QGD?

These days I'm mainly a 1.e4 player, but I used to play 1.d4 a fair bit. I used to vary between the Exchange Variation and the main lines with Bg5. But I never really had a lot of success against the QGD - it's a very positional opening and I'm more of a tactical player.

the exchange is for poopyheads =p

I used to play this back when I played very much at all and it certainly used to be good then - I assume there must be an antidote or else the QGD would have disappeared completely!

It gives a nice choice between O-O and a slow build up in the centre with f3 and e4 or O-O-O with an attack on the K side. Needless to say I chose the latter more often!

One other nice move order trick is 1d4 d5; 2.c4 e6; 3.Nc3 Nf6; 4.Bg5 Be7; 5.cd ed; 6.e3 c6; 7.Qc2!

If Black replies with 7.....Ne4 a la Lasker then you have 8.Bxe7 Qxe7; 9. Nxd5! which is pretty much game over.

Some great stuff in this thread. Thank y'all for the help. I'm definitely giving it a shot next time the opportunity presents itself.

I'm playing in a G/90'+30" tournament this weekend, and had white in the first game against a 1670. The game opened 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 and since I've been wanting to try this Ne2 stuff, I figured this was the perfect opportunity. Overall, I really enjoyed playing this line for the first time. I won, but somehow overlooked 21.Bxd7 which wins a piece. Not a perfect game, but fun nonetheless. Thanks again to everyone in this thread for the comments, they were helpful during the game.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=77251