The game this morning was a text book reason the Marshall can be dubious in the hands of someone who is inexperienced with certain lines. On turn 7 White is left with 3 central connected pawns and Black has no compensation to show for it, the Black Knight was too busy being chased around and then forced to exchange itself for White’s Knight and pawn recapture. There are way to mitigate the downside of the Marshall as long as you play with opening theory and follow the best lines but even then you net a worse position than something like the QGD, Slav or Semi-Slav. As usual I enjoy playing through this opening because it’s one of my most prepared if not most prepared and it quite common in the lower ratings. 2…Nf6 to defend the pawn makes sense from a rule of thumb point of view but if Black doesn’t understand further than that trouble is coming.
