Understanding Before Moving 2: Queen's Gambit Structures

Herman Grooten

Sample pages (pdf)

Herman Grooten's series on understanding openings from a planning and pawn structure perspective continues with the Queen's Gambit structures. He focuses on bringing the reader to understand the pawn structures within the variety of openings, and to the plans and concepts that can be derived from these structures. He also reviews characteristic games by grandmasters, preferably top players. Strong chess players often know intuitively where the pieces belong.

The Queen's Gambit, and especially the so-called Carlsbad structure, which arises from the Exchange Variation lends itself remarkably well for mapping out the different kind of ideas in a schematic manner. After White at a certain point plays c4xd5 and Black answers this with ..e6xd5, a static (and very common)pawn formation arises which will remain unchanged for a long time. The static nature of the position is perfect for creating long, schematic plans for both sides, in which the pieces are placed on pre-defined squares.

Published 2019, softback, 239 pages.