Müller: Typical Queen's Gambit Exchange Variation - Effective Middlegame Training

If you want to learn this or that opening, you can choose from many or even dozens of textbooks. But what if you want to learn the middlegame strategy that should be used in positions that have arisen from this or that opening? Or, to put it another way, in positions that are typical for this or that opening.

Of course, every middlegame textbook contains one or two positions that can be clearly assigned to this or that opening. However, their number is negligible compared to the positions from all the other openings that are treated as examples. And thus, all of the positions whose strategic treatment the reader does not actually want to learn.

For example, as the author asks quite rightly, is the treatment of the topics of hanging pawns and minority attacks not just as dispensable for an e4 player as it is essential for a d4 player? Why should a die-hard fan of Indian openings be interested in the strategic subtleties of positions that result from all these complicated Queen's Gambit systems? And of course the other way round too: What can a player who generally avoids fianchetto openings do with all these subtleties of Indian positions?

And it is precisely this striking and astonishing vacuum in the area of ​​middlegame literature that inspired the author to try to improve it: Anyone who wants to learn the typical middlegame strategy for the Queen's Gambit, for example, can get a textbook and exercise book that deals exclusively with the Queen's Gambit. However, this book initially only deals with the 'Exchange Variation' - more precisely: with positions of the 'Karlsbad Structure' type with white pawns on d4 and e3 against black ones on c6 and d5, which is typical of the vast majority of systems that arise from the Exchange Variation.

Special mention should be made of the fact that the 120 exercises have been assigned to specific themes in order to ensure a varied and entertaining presentation – for example:

– Promotion candidate

– Relegation candidate

– Violent measures or increased pressure

– only train

and the like.