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In the game Van der Berg - Kramer in 1950, they followed the following move order in the Queen's Gambit Declined

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      1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. cxd5 exd5 4.Nc3 Nf6 5. Bg5 Be7 6. e3 c6 7. Qc2 O-O 8. Bd3 Nbd7 9. Nf3 Re8 10. O-O Nf8 11. Rab1 g6 12.b4 a6 13.a4 Ne6 14.Bh4

But what is the subtlety of playing ...a6 before ...Ne6?

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  • I am a bit unsure what your question is. "But what is the subtlety?" It seems you can sensibly play the moves in either order. The engines seem to think they are equally strong, and from the position after White's 12th move, the lichess database of masters games has 12...a6 53% of the time and 12...Ne6 47% of the time, often transposing into each other after the next move.
    – James Martin
    Commented Apr 23 at 19:54
  • I see, my Fritz engine pointed that ...Ne6 was weaker and I didn't get it. Now with the lichess stats I see that it is played after ...a6, because you are playing ...a6 in all set ups, but you can also maintain the flexibility of playing ...Nfd7 to answer b4 with ...c5.
    – baristocrona
    Commented Apr 23 at 22:22

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In this game above, White is initiating a Minority Attack, where White pushes pawns on the Queenside to intend to disrupt Black's queenside pawns. If Black doesn't play a move to stop or slow White down, the next move will be b5, and Black will probably have to exchange on c6, creating a serious pawn weakness. It is typical for Black to play a6 to slow this down at this point before playing Ne6. If Black spends this move playing Ne6, then they will not be able to prevent b5.

The minority attack is a key theme of QGD Exchange Variations. There are more ways to deal with the minority attack, but this is a very mainline way to defend it.

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