In designing this book the author was guided by the following considerations. If you want to
learn this or that opening you can choose from dozens or even hundreds of textbooks. But what
if you want to get familiar with the middlegame strategy used in positions that have emerged
from exactly this or that opening? Or to put it another way: in positions that are typical for
this or that opening. Of course in every middlegame textbook there's one or the other position
that clearly comes from this or that opening. However their number is negligible in the
context of example positions from all the other openings whose middlegame treatment the reader
doesn't want to learn at all. For example aren't the issues of hanging pawns and minority
attack - the author asks with good reason - just as dispensable for an e4 player as they are
essential for a d4 player? - Why should a die-hard enthusiast of Indian openings care about the
strategic intricacies of positions resulting from all those complicated Queen's Gambit systems?
And of course vice versa: what use are all these subtleties of Indian positions to a player who
'by nature' avoids fianchetto openings? And it's precisely this conspicuous and astounding
vacuum in the area of middlegame literature that inspired the author to make an appropriate
attempt at improvement: If you want to learn Sicilian middlegame strategy you will get a
textbook and exercise book in which only Sicilians are treated. However this book only deals
with the Queen's Gambit - more precisely: the Exchange Variation with white pawns on e3 and d4
against black pawns on c6 and d5 - the so-called 'Carlsbad structure'. It deserves special
mention that the 120 exercises have been assigned to specific topics for the benefit of
entertaining diversity - for example 'the relegation candidate' 'the only move' 'violence or
pressure increase' and the like.
