Tips for Queens Gambit

My Advice is to buy box of tissues and box of Kit Kat Bars.

- Queen Gambit Decline players tend to cry a lot so you will need to give them tissues to dry their eyes.

- Slav & Semi-Slav players are literally insane. They will try to do crazy attacks. They even have variation called Note BOOM which when you see name like that you know crazy stuff is about to go down. Against these sort of players you should TAKE A MOMENT and eat Kit Kat bar so you try to calculate their craziness.

Don't listen to the BS in post 2. You aren't going to get the proper knowledge on the Queen's Gambit from a bunch of nobodies on chess.com.

There are many variations you need to learn. The QGA, QGD, Slav, and Sem1-Slav being the main 4.

Serious advice here. Start with the QGD. It is the most popular of the 4 and follows the fundamentals of chess almost to a T.

While the book is 25 years old and maybe some of the theory is dated, the purpose of this exercise is not to find the latest novelty on move 23. It is one of the best opening books ever written on any opening, and you will learn a lot about the fundamentals (not the latest theory) on the Queen's Gambit Declined.

It is called "The Queen's Gambit Declined" by Matthew Sadler. You likely would need to order it online on a site like Amazon as your local book store is not likely to carry a chess book that is 25 years old.

That ought to keep you occupied for 6 months. You will learn all the fundamentals of the QGD and be exposed to basically all lines of the QGD after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 (Excluding the Catalan).

Agree with last post: buy a book. I have been using Schandorff's.

Thanks for the tips!

What parts of the game do you find tricky? Are you playing against beginners or more experienced players?

Understanding the IQP(isolani, isolated queen's pawn) and Hanging-Pawns pawn structures are the very basics of d4-c4 positions. Just by knowing the basics of them will put you above the average intermediates.

As for QG specifically, you need to know the Minority attack, Carlsbad-structure, QGA(often transposing into an IQP), or perhaps even Slav/Caro-Kann structure. Understanding these general principles in the QG should give your a basic game plan in the middle game, which is what one should desire.

For theory specifically, if you go for the more classic routes and not Catalan, there isn't a heavy amount of theory involved. Generally it is more about the game plans, so just gain experience and learn from failures.

From the black side, I'll suggest Michael Pruskin's book Countering the Queen's Gambit. It's for black and I got it more for the 'side' variations. As an aside for OTB play, while the London System and Catalan are played by white at all levels, I see the London System and Catalan a lot more than Queen's Gambit after I play 1...d5 against players 1800 and below.