Ask a Chess Openings Expert!
Dear Ask-a-Chess-Openings-Expert,
My husband and I were planning on taking a trip next month to Hawaii for our 25th wedding anniversary, but my mother refuses to watch the kids ever since Timmy put her cat in the refrigerator. Bill, my husband, doesn’t want to take Timmy along to Hawaii, but what choice have we? He’s only eight years old and all the local babysitters ignore our calls.
- Frantic in Felton
Dear Frantic,
One of the great advantages of the Closed Sicilian is the lack of concrete variations needed to play this opening on a relatively high (1500-2200) level. In general, White can simply develop his pieces on natural squares, hold the center, and play for the f4 break while Black struggles to achieve timely and meaningful counterplay. I recommend this approach for many of my students until they have a more thorough grounding of the more ambitious main lines of the Dragon, Sveshnikov and Scheveningen variations.
Dear Ask-a-Chess-Openings-Expert,
Me and my best friend Harold from High School have been accepted at the same college but I don’t want to share a dorm room with Harold because he snores really loudly. My Mom says I should just get earplugs and that Harold’s Mom is the president of our local Country Club and we should be always be nice to them so we can continue to use their tennis court. I hate earplugs, though, and I don’t want to start college off on the wrong foot by not hearing my alarm clock go off. What should I do?
- Bummed in Beaverton
Dear Bummed,
We all have had our difficulties with certain officially “unsound” openings like the Englund Gambit, the Jerome Gambit, and of course the Smith-Morra. However, with a few simple principles to guide us, we can fearlessly face even the most brazen attacks dead on and punish our opponents for their impudence! For more details, please subscribe to my youtube channel.
Dear Ask-a-Chess-Openings-Expert,
I’m 34 years old and have recently completed a twelve-step program for recovering agoraphobics where I met Jenny, the love of my life. Unfortunately, Jenny has not yet finished the program and currently refuses to leave her apartment. As a result of this, none of my friends believe she actually exists and have taken to mocking me at office parties which my therapist says could potentially retrigger my symptoms. I’d like to make some videos with Jenny to prove them all wrong, but Jenny has so far refused to do that. I’ve even thought about making some anyhow in secret, though I know that’s wrong. What should I do? The more Jenny refuses to go outside with me the more I wonder if there might be other issues in play with our relationship.
- Nervous in Newark,
Dear Nervous,
One of the chief causes of stagnation of chess development among players rated 1800 and above is the inability to understand the nuances of isolated Queen’s pawn (IQP) structures. To that end, I have developed a series of opening videos on the Alapin Sicilian, the Tarrasch Queen’s Gambit Declined, and the Botvinnik-Panov Attack. In these you will learn the attacking power of the IQP while learning from the defender’s side how best to exploit the static weaknesses it entails. Also included are several deeply annotated classic games from both sides of this all-important strategic concept - sign up today for my entire “Opening Supercharger” series and get all five chessbase-compatible movies for less than one Euro per move.
Happy Chessing!
