Openings · A80–A99

Dutch Defence

1…f5 — take e4, unbalance the game on move one, and accept a loosened king for the rest of it.

1.d4 f5played as Black

The idea

There are three Dutches and they have almost nothing in common. The Leningrad plays …g6 and …Bg7 with …d6 and a later …e5; the Classical plays …e6, …Be7, …d6 and …Qe8 with the attack on the h-file; the Stonewall plays …e6, …d5, …c6 and …Bd6 and takes e4 for good.

All three attack on the kingside, and all three pay for it on the a2–g8 diagonal and the e6 square. Choosing which one, before the game, is most of the work.

Practise the line

You play Black; the other side answers on its own. Nothing here is saved or graded.

Your move 1 of 10/1

1.d4f5

White is answering…

Common mistakes

Three that come up again and again below master level. Each is ordinary opening theory — a named trap, or the error every coach corrects — not a statistic, and not drawn from anybody's games.

Chasing the bishop on g5

1.d4 f5 2.Bg5 h6 3.Bh4 g5 4.Bg3 f4 5.e3 h5 6.Bd3 Rh6 7.Qxh5+ Rxh5 8.Bg6

The mistake: Answering 2.Bg5 with …h6 and …g5, and then trapping the bishop with …f4.
Why it costs: The bishop is not trapped, it is bait: 5.e3 offers it, and after 5…h5 6.Bd3 Rh6 7.Qxh5+! Rxh5 8.Bg6 is mate on move eight. The pawns that went hunting are the reason the king has no cover.
Instead: 2…Nf6 or 2…g6, and let the bishop stand there. In this opening the kingside pawns have one job, and it is not chasing bishops.

The Stonewall's bishop

1.d4 f5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.g3 d5 5.Bg2 Bd6 6.O-O O-O 7.b3 c6 8.Ba3

The mistake: Building the wall — …e6, …d5, …c6 — and leaving the bishop on c8 inside it.
Why it costs: That bishop is the known problem of the whole system, and White's standard plan is to trade the good one off it: Ba3 or Bf4 offers the exchange of dark-squared bishops, and after it Black is left defending light squares with the piece that cannot reach them.
Instead: …b6 and …Ba6 or …Bb7 early, or …Bd7–e8–h5. Getting that bishop out is not an improvement to the position, it is the position.

Leaving the king in the middle

1.d4 f5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bg5 d5 4.Bxf6 exf6 5.e3 Be6 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qf3

The mistake: Treating the opening as a normal one and taking time over development.
Why it costs: …f5 opened the e8–h5 diagonal on move one, and checks on h5 exist for the rest of the game. Every tempo spent answering one is a tempo the kingside attack never gets, and the king cannot always castle out of it in time.
Instead: Castle early and accept a slightly worse version of the setup rather than a much worse version of the game. In the Dutch the king is the thing being paid for the space.

Try it on one of your own

The board above is for the line itself; this is for a game you played. Paste a game in this opening, or pull one from chess.com, and every move is graded against what the engine would have played. Open the board, read how the grading works, or go back to the other openings.