Seems like a fairly popular system for white, but browsing Chessbase 11, it seems like when I dig into actual games, white seems to draw or lose a lot more than winning.
I’m curious about the London System, but not sure if it’s something worth looking into. Although I do learn quite a bit with Chessbase 11 and other stuff, occasionally I like to get actual opening training material. I’m good at a handful of openings, but I’m itching to learn some new stuff. Something to whip out on occasion to give my opponents whiplash, in case they start thinking they know all my tricks.
I might look at the Dutch Defense as a major line though. Seems to be a bit popular with the higher level players in the area. But the London System isn’t really a specific opening, so I’d need to get some training material on it.
I’ve been playing it regularly. It’s a solid opening that is difficult for Black to crack and which has excellent attacking possibilities if you’ve gotten into it with study. The Dutch can be tricky with the London until you play it for a while.
I would look for games by GM’s. For example, when Kamsky was more active (and younger and stronger), he used to play the London system a lot. This would reassure you that the system was “on the gold standard”. Also, you can look at each game to see how Kamsky played it. You could learn how to play it yourself that way.
Don’t trust the “numbers”. For instance, suppose you find 10 London system games in some database for 2017, and White wins 3, draws 3, loses 4. Does that tell you something is wrong? Probably not. Many, many games get played but never submitted to databases. So you aren’t getting a complete picture.
Also look at the relative ratings of the players involved. A conservative opening like the London System is frequently used by lower rated players to try and simply equalize and avoid weaknesses against stronger opponents on the theory that they don’t have to try to beat the opponents; due to their rating edge the opponents have to try to beat them. A large percentage of wins by black may simply be due to the fact that the players with Black were better chess players than those with White.
There are a number of books which cover the London System. The better ones include:
Ideas Behind Modern Chess Openings, by Gary Lane
Win with the London System, by Sverre Johnson and Vlatko Kovacevic. Kovacevic played the London System extensively in his career.
The opening has been called “The Boring System” and “the old man’s bad habit” (Aagaard). It is simple to learn and can be played effectively against many Black defensive formations. The books above provide analysis and many game examples to show how to attack. There are also ways to defend the London System. I found that playing the Kings Indian Defense and a form of the Queen’s Indian Defense leading to a hedgehog formation are successful ways to defend. Jacob Aagaard in his book, “Meeting 1.d4”, suggests challenging the White bishop with …Bd6 as soon as possible to force White to make a decision about where to put the Bishop on f4, to slide it to g3 or exchange it.
While it is easy to learn, one problem is that it can be played too mechanically which leads to missing opportunities and traps. This is a system opening. You learn a vary narrow set of middle games and tactics. I know players who have played it all of the time. They like it, but they say sometimes the opening gets a little dull and drawish. They feel like they have run out of gas at some point during the game. The exciting games they have studied don’t always occur. But some players like dull, technical games where they are playing for two results (win or draw). They sit and wait for opponents to make mistakes rather than force the play to look for dynamic solutions.
Another good book on the London is " The agile London system" -Romero & De Prado.Someone already mentioned that Kamsky plays it quite a bit as does Magnus Carlsen.
I really like GM Simon Williams’s Chessbase DVD (or download) on the opening. He treats it as an attacking system, usually featuring an early h4 and delayed (if ever) castling.
In the Prochess league IM Daniel Gurevich has won a couple of nice London games this way. I thought he had insufficient compensation for his queenside right up until he crashed through.
What peaked my interest was a London System opening book that came out this year. I’m presuming that The London System is getting fairly popular with higher level players. There’s only so many openings available to grandmasters so it’s only natural that less popular openings will get more play.
I figure it’s being propelled by chess engines. Programmers are always trying to get an edge with their engine, so it’s only natural that they would want to force their engine into certain lines. With that in mind, since engines can play engine to engine games all day long and never get tired; over time, you’d find a large quantity of new theory in old lines.
I found over 4,000 games from TWIC 01-1208, where both players are 2300+ FIDE. 44% are draws with a small edge for white in the results (52% white wins vs 48% black wins in decisive games). A substantial portion of the games (almost half) have occurred since 2015. I attribute that to Carlsen and other SuperGMs trotting out the London more often. Chess has always followed trends and fashion of the top players (think the KID of Zurich 1953)…the 21st century isn’t much different.
The London System Powerbook, according to the description, is based on 11,000 human games, and 176,000 engine to engine games. I’d say it’s not a bad idea using engine to engine games for making really specific opening books.
Although after decades of opening books, you’d think they would have invented a way to take a massive opening book and just user select the types of opening you want the engine to use, but apparently that’s not possible, and it still seems to take some tweaking by a human to make a decent opening book, especially if it’s so specific as one opening, hence the market for opening books limited to just one opening.
