Beating the Queen’s Gambit – Indian Style!

Spanish GM Renier Castellanos completes his cutting-edge repertoire for Black against 1.d4, with the Vienna Variation (4.Nc3 dxc4) and Catalan (4.g3 dxc4) the biggest topics. This book also provides thorough guidance against all of White’s significant alternatives on moves 2-4.

A cutting-edge repertoire for Black against 1.d4

Renier Castellanos is an experienced chess trainer and an active competitor, who earned his final grandmaster norm after working on this book and its companion volume.

 Indian Style!

This book serves as the complementary second half to Playing the Nimzo-Indian, completing a comprehensive project that I am thrilled to see come to fruition. I cannot express enough gratitude to those who have supported me throughout this journey. The project began at the Killer Chess Training Academy (KCT), which you will see referenced multiple times in this book.

repertoire to cover all of White’s popular and less common alternatives after 1.d4, outside of 2.c4
and 3.¤c3.

Beating the Queen’s Gambit

Hence, the repertoire presented in this book was created. The goal was to provide Black with a fun and ambitious approach against 1.d4, while staying within the framework of 1…¤f6 and 2…e6. That was the initial vision, which was of course revised, improved and enhanced multiple times over. The book is divided into four parts:

The first part covers various options for White after 1.d4 ¤f6 2.c4 e6, including rare but increasingly trendy moves like 3.¥f4 and 3.¥g5. We then go a step further, by including the moves 3.¤f3 d5 and examining alternatives to the main lines of 4.¤c3 and 4.g3.

Against most of the lines in that first part of the book, I propose a reaction based on …d7-d5 and …dxc4, followed by …a7-a6 and a subsequent queenside expansion with moves like …c7-c5 and…b7-b5 – sometimes played together, sometimes independently.

Excerpt