Duckfest Digest 07 Decision to study openings
Much against everyone’s advice
- Soulwax
Introduction
Higher rated players consistently argue beginners should prioritize training tactics, learn end games, develop your middle game and to prioritize opening principles over opening theory. The general consensus is that players below a certain rating should not waste their time studying openings. As the title of this post suggests, I’ve ignored this advice. It’s one of the few things where I deviated from the beginner guidelines. As a whole I’ve been a dutiful student, playing long time formats, analyzing my games and playing my puzzles and lessons. But to not study openings was never an option for me. I even chose to make studying openings my primary focus. In this article, I’m sharing my reasoning and motivation to do so.
Semantics of Studying
When I use the term “studying openings”, I’m not referring to just memorizing lines. To me “studying openings'' also means researching key ideas and developing an understanding of the main positions. As a semantics guy, I strongly oppose equating studying with memorizing, they are different things. It is not recommended to memorize openings you don't understand, however it should be recommended to study openings you don’t understand.
Caveat Lector - It can’t be repeated enough that you should not just memorize lines. Yet, there is no denying it’s easy to fall into the ‘memorization trap‘ where you focus on what is supposedly the best move, rather than understanding the position. Personally, I have fallen for this more times than I can count. So be aware.
Also, when you are an 800 rated player, you might want to stay away from the Sicilian or the Ruy Lopez.
My reasons to study opening
Reason 1. Avoiding early mistakes
After each game I would start engine analysis and see where I went wrong. I often combined this with openingtree.com to see what other players would do in these positions. My intention, obviously, was to prevent early game mistakes and inaccuracies. The game analysis is one of the best features available to players, but it has a couple of drawbacks. In this context the drawbacks were that
- my focus shifted to early game
- I started working on my game one move at a time
This played a significant role in my decision to focus on openings. It’s my least compelling argument. It’s just what happens.
Reason 2. Tackling the tangible
As much as I believe in the importance of learning abstract themes, it’s so much easier to focus on concrete positions. Understanding color complexes and how this affects Bishop trades is easily more valuable than memorizing a best move in a specific position in the opening. But the latter is so much more concrete. I remember watching a GothamChess video, where he made a super interesting remark about color complexes. He explained something about positioning your pawns after trading away your light squared Bishop. It made an impression on me, but didn't help me play better, because I found it difficult to incorporate his wisdom into my game.
In comparison, improving my game one position at a time is much simpler. As an example, one of the positions I faced frequently was
I can just find out what move is best here and I will do better next time. My future results will simply improve.
Reason 3. Exploring uncharted territory
As mentioned in my first article, I had some foundation of how to play, but my knowledge of common positions soon turned out to be outdated. After two decades of absence from the game, facing a new meta, I started from scratch regarding openings. For the London system plenty of resources were available everywhere. For the Caro-Kann, I chose GothamChess to be my guide in studying the opening.
Reason 4. Getting blasted in Blitz
In a previous article I mentioned how Blitz was my least successful format. While it might be debatable whether opening knowledge wins games at this level, no opening knowledge sure as hell loses games, even at this level. Rapid allows for some time to think in the early game, but in Blitz you can’t be thinking on the third or fourth move. During my Blitz games, I realized I needed more time to think about moves in the opening more than I thought I did. And I got punished for it. It became clear, I needed some form of opening repertoire. At least, I needed to develop a set of opening moves that were okay, that I could just play fast.
Compared to my peers I had more understanding of the game, but less concrete (readily available) knowledge. In Blitz that’s not good.
Reason 5. Mastering my memory
There is one more argument to be made, that I have not seen mentioned by others, that’s the most important one for me. One of my other main drivers was not related to openings per se, it was that I wanted to improve my ability to recognize positions. I remember watching Hikaru and he recalled a game he played 15 years ago. Which I found impressive. Of course, when I think about it, this is not particularly impressive for a player of his status. Over time I’ve been impressed by professional players’ memories many times. As a cool example check out
I am not delusional enough to believe I should be on par with them. I don’t even aspire to be even close. But how far behind am I? Would I be able to memorize a game if I wanted to?
I selected a game against a friend of mine, a game that I was especially proud of, to serve as a test case to practice my memorization skills. It was hard. It felt like I was trying to memorize a sequence of 70 random characters. My problem wasn’t just my declining memorization skills, I can live with that. The issue was more fundamental:
- If I want to play better than I did last game I should be able to remember last game
- If I want to be able to remember my games, I need to be able to read my games as a collection of patterns rather than a series of consecutive moves.
In a way, I wanted to categorize and structure my games more. An opening repertoire seemed like a good place to start. How did I do that? That will be the subject of my next article.
