Sometimes a chess author’s timing is as important as a chess player’s, and in this case, Jacob Aagaard has arrived with a good book at a good time. The Modern Stonewall Dutch (1.d4 f5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 e6 4.c4 c6 followed by ...Bd6) has proven to be a durable defense that offers white no more than a normal advantage while giving black a decent hold on the center and reasonable counterchances. Even given these facts, this defense has not been written about in some time. While the Leningrad Dutch has gotten some attention, it’s been a long time since there have been books devoted to other Dutch variations.

Stonewall practitioners have been waiting perhaps since 1989, when GM Larry Christiansen and IM Jeremy Silman did a book that covered all variations of the Dutch and touched upon the Modern Stonewall lines that were just coming into their own in international play. Since then, perhaps one of the more interesting book coverages was a chapter that Igor Khenkin and Vladimir Kramnik wrote on Modern Treatments of the Dutch Defense for Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov’s POSITIONAL PLAY. It should be noted that Yusupov, along with Short, Nikolic, and Vaiser have been key proponents of this modern approach to the Dutch.

The author is a young player with a couple of solid opening books to his credit, and while not a practitioner of this defense, he has done a good job of gathering the relevant material. The critical tries for white against this defense are presented, and the author has generally found the little nuances and developments that are most challenging to both sides. As a result, the book provides a nice overview of the state of theory of this particular defense.

I’ve often criticized books for providing little introduction that gives a player a sense of the general themes for both players and the way that the play usually develops. In what will likely be a first, I would suggest that this book goes a bit overboard in its introductory comments. In a book of 160 pages, nearly a third (50 pages) are devoted to this discussion. While this thoroughly covers the general plans for both black and white, it takes an awful lot of space to do so. There is, for example, an 11-page discussion of the history of the Dutch that might be space better spent elsewhere. Even the strategic themes are generally represented with complete games, which takes up additional space.

The main theoretical chapters provide reasonable coverage of white’s primary methods of attacking the Modern Stonewall. After 5.Nf3 d5 6.0-0 Bd6 white’s main tries are 7.b3, 7.Bf4, and 7.Qc2 (although 7.Nbd2 and 7.Ne5 also are deserving and receive coverage). Earlier, 5.Nh3 sets black some problems. In each case, the author lays out the theory as it exists as present and gives his opinion on the best course for both black and white.

Although written for the black player, the author does not seem overly biased to that side of the board. While the coverage is solid and there is a fair amount of explanation of plans and ideas for both sides, there is not a great deal of original analysis. The book is no database dump, but the author’s relative lack of experience playing the defense may contribute to this fact. For the average player, the material presented will be more than enough to learn or update the variation.

In general, the Modern Dutch became popular when black stopped focusing his attention entirely at the kingside and looked to play in the center (and even the queenside) while seeking to activate his queen bishop. In older times, this problem child was left to languish on the back rank while black pursued a mating attack on the kingside with moves like ...Qe8-h5, ...Ne4, and …Rf6. Unfortunately, this crude method was generally not effective against accurate white play, and black would often find himself overrun on the queenside or mired in a bad bishop endgame after the queens left the board.
As black turned to plans involving ...b6 and developing the bishop via b7 or a6 and working for ...c6-c5, his score with the variation improved remarkably. Of course, white players started finding counter methods, often involving an early Ne5 and play against the weakened c6 pawn after ...b6. Sometimes this involved the use of a Ne5-c4 trick based on pins on the long diagonal, and white’s scores started to improve. Then black started combining plans, so that in situations where ...b6 weakened the queenside too much, he could resort to bringing out his queen bishop via d7-e8-h4, and the pendulum swung back again. So it goes with opening practice. This book does a reasonable job of presenting both of these critical black methods, and the author is flexible enough to suggest where and when to use either of them.

The book concludes with a twelve page chapter on other Stonewalls and sixteen pages on lines where white plays e2-e3 rather than fianchettoing his king bishop. In practice, these chapters may not be of much use for most readers. The first chapter looks, for example, at lines where black tries to do without ...c7-c6, intending to play c7-c5 in one go to save a tempo. If you’re looking for an alternate way to play the defense, you can give this a try, but it carries some risks associated with the unknown.

The lines with e2-e3 in standard Dutch move orders are generally considered pretty innocuous – black has a variety of methods for getting a reasonable game and they are seldom seen in games involving strong players. In fact, the games in this chapter generally arise from alternate move orders, including 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 e6 4.e3 f5. This has enjoyed a fair amount of popularity, and if you happen to use this move order to get to a Dutch, this chapter is for you. For most of the players reading the book, however, this is likely not the case.

While these alternate move orders are covered, there is no discussion of white’s “anti-Dutch” methods, including dangerous lines 2.Nc3, 2.Bg5, or 2.h3. I think it is notable that of the game’s 77 featured games, only 20 started with the move order 1.d4 f5 – 57 started with some other first move (1...e6 being the most frequent choice). I think this is indicative of the fact that many top players view 1...f5 as risky against these alternate tries. If you are going to start playing the Dutch via 1...f5, you had better invest some time (and money) in a book that covers these alternate lines as well. In my mind, this would have been a more useful book if it had cut back on some of the introductory comments and ending chapter coverage and presented some material on the key anti-Dutch lines instead.

In conclusion, the Dutch Modern Stonewall is a viable defense that receives some much needed updating in this book. The author is sure handed in walking the prospective player through the key options for both sides, and the theory is accurate and current. The aspiring Dutch player wishing to use the 1.d4 f5 move order should know, however, that some of the key tries against the defense occur before this book picks up – lines like 2.Nc3, 2.Bg5, and 2.h3 will have to be learned elsewhere.

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