The Georgian GM Lasha Janjgava has produced a fantastic text on the QGD and Catalan for black. The book is worth buying for its coverage of the Catalan alone, though it also includes whole chapters with theory and game fragments for most variations of the Queen’s Gambit Declined, including the Tartakower, the Exchange, and the popular Lasker Defense, which Anand has been using to great effect against Topalov recently.
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In his last few encounters with the black pieces against Anand, Carlsen has employed the Ruy Lopez Breyer variation three times and drawn all three games. As a fan, it’s odd to see these two battling in an open game so deeply in the same variation, almost matchlike, because both of them tend to be 1.d4 players. While the world anticipates the real match to come between these two (though that may not happen) I can’t help but wonder if this “battle in the breyer” is serving merely as a proxy for their behind the scene preparations in the catalan, or would they attempt to surprise one another with 1.e4 in a match setting? More on the Breyer, after the jump…
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