Gathering KID Ideas Against the London
Today, I am idea hunting against the dreaded London openings.
Before, I want to do two small parentheses:
Parenthesis 1: As always, when I talk about openings, I will (selfishly) try to solve a weakness in my repertoire to illustrate my point. But the main takeaway of this piece should be the process with which a non-master can learn on his own and improve his understanding of the position.
Parenthesis 2: This fishing for ideas is very fun and has helped me a lot recently. However, I never did it before I reached 1900. Intuitively I think it could have helped me around 1700 already, but probably not before. That being said, if you find the process fun and stimulating, you should indulge yourself. It may not be as useful if you are only 1300, but it can't be useless. Worst case scenario, it will be work done for later.
Parenthesis closes, back to today's problem.
Curiously, since I played the London opening for more than three-quarters of my chess life, I never know what to do against it. Note that I have been precise with my word here. I didn't say that I was systematically outplayed, crushed, or felt into bad tactical lines. I said I don't know what to do. In a game, this translates into a classic three steps process:
- Reach a somewhat solid defensive position out of the opening (which is always satisfying when you play black)
- Have no plan to develop some counter-play or an attack.
- Play some passive moves
- Get into a bad endgame or fall to some attacks
If you feel that way about some particular opening or variation, you don't understand the strategic theme of the position. That means you don't understand the opening.
Again, note the precise vocabulary here. If my 4 step process describes you in a specific opening, you don't understand it, as opposed to not knowing it. If you get mated in 12 moves every time you played the Sicilian, yes, you probably should know a few lines. But if you systematically get a bad middle game, you should understand the position's themes better.
In fact, for non-master, 99% improving about the opening is synonymous with understanding strategic themes better.
Now that you have put a correct diagnostic on the problem, what to do?
You already guessed what not to do, learn lots of lines from a 400 pages book on your opening.
If you are lucky, chess.com has a set of videos for you to re-watch on the specific variation you want. If not, you have to look for themes yourself and go hunt for ideas in games of the greats.
My suggestion is simple, open a chess database and go to a starting position you are comfortable with. Then go through games of masters. The higher-rated, the better, of course, but any master will do for us mortal.
In the first stage, you go briefly through the moves and see if something catches your eyes. Perhaps a cool-looking knight maneuver, perhaps an impressive tactic, or perhaps just a move you don't understand that tends to come back in multiple games.
Set a few games aside and put them through chess.com's analysis tool. This step is important as you don't want to waste time trying to understand a weird move that is actually just a blunder.
Finally, you set aside a small subset of moves that illustrate interesting patterns, some strategic theme, ways to launch an attack, etc.
It can be tempting to start to memorize a few lines "just in case." It's a bad idea. You will forget them in two months.
What you want to get out of the exercise is:
- Gain time when staring at the board and having "no idea what to play next," not because the position is hard, but because nothing seems worth playing.
- Long-term plans to play actively in the positions.
- Understanding why some moves are never played.
- (maybe a few tactical traps if they look easy to remember)
The final advice is to recognize that this fishing for idea business is just that: fishing. Sometimes you will catch something, sometimes not. The usual output for me is to find "something," but not much.
A few fishes
To illustrate the concept above, here is what I found looking for ideas against the London.
Please remember that I did not find these patterns in some book or on a video from some GM. It just came to me after staring at these games for a while. This means that: a) it will be easy for me to remember, but b) I may be completely wrong. So as always, take what I say with a grain of salt.
Ok, back to the fishing: I play the KID, and I want a position with a somewhat similar pawn structure to be able to fall back into the comfort zone even with some weird move order, so I looked at games starting from this position:
First catch: a cool twist on an early classic idea --> attacking the London bishop like the candidate
Obviously, I like the tactic traps very much, but the positional advantages of this Nepo "twist" is enough for me. The true takeaway of this manoeuver is that I can easily get a classical KID attack with my king pawns rushing across the board. This will become my default idea when my opponents don't hide their bishop with an early a3.
Second catch: a cool knight manoeuver
With this knight dance, I was already sold on c3, but the next game will illustrate much more why this push is thematic against the London.
In any case, getting the knight up there seems like a reachable goal in many of those games, and, for us non-master, it will be more than enough to play positionally.
Another one: The c5 theme by Artemiev
After reviewing this game, I hit myself on the forehead. Of course, the b2 pawn. It's the classical weakness of the London, since the bishop moves away from this square early. Now I understand why most master games go for the c5 push instead of e5 against the London. This will definitively be a game-changer for me.
One last fish for the road: understanding a6 with Radjabov
I saw this a6 move in many games I went through, and it made no sense to me. I thought it was some kind of defensive maneuver to go for b5 if white ever push a5. In other words, it looked like a waste of a tempo. This game helped me see how it allows the b5 push to create some queen-side action at the proper moment. Duly noted, thanks, Teimour!
That's it for today. I hope you found some ideas for your repertoire. But much more importantly, if you are a beginner, I hope you saw:
- How one can improve his own repertoire with his own research without being a master and
- how fun it can be to go fishing for ideas. Just for that, you should stick to chess!
Until next time, happy learning!
