How to Prepare Against Chess Opponents
You wake up excitedly, grab your computer, and check next round's pairings. You see your next opponent, and he seems to be a difficult one who has had a good performance this tournament. What do you do now?
Prepare against your opponent!
Preparing against your opponent is the best way to ensure that you don't get into an ugly position in the middle game, and it also helps with time management, as you won't have to think a lot in the opening. In this post, I will share tips that helped me prepare against opponents, which helped me gain over 600 points in the last year. To make this post clearer, I will organise the post into two cases: preparing against equal or lower-rated players and preparing against higher rated players.
When you play an opponent who is as good as you or worse than you, chances are that your opponent is going to stick to his openings, and won't play a sideline he has barely studied, as it will be difficult to outplay you in a worse position. The best way to prepare against these opponents is by going to websites like Chess-Db to check for your opponent's games. After you have found your opponents games, you should see what lines your opponent plays against your opening. If he diverts from lines that you know, see grandmaster games of that line, and create a repertoire and memorise the moves and the reasoning behind each one until you feel comfortable.
If you are playing a higher-rated opponent, preparation will be a bit more tricky. You need to make sure you are very comfortable out of the opening and know all of the ideas for white and black. First, check your opponent's games. If he has many recent ones with one opening, then chances are that he only plays that one opening. Simply follow the steps above against lower-rated players if this is the case. If your opponent plays multiple openings, then instead of creating an extensive repertoire in each opening, just get a general idea in each opening. I have found chess videos on openings to be extremely helpful, especially Chess.com videos and Saint Louis's videos, as they explain the main ideas for both sides objectively and concisely.
Lastly, to solidify your concepts, you must practice. This is useful regardless of your opponent. Always play at least five blitz games against a computer rated a bit higher than your rating, and try seeing how well your openings turn out.
If you complete all of these steps, you will surely feel good before and during the match! Just make sure you always understand each opening move, and the ideas for your opening, instead of purely memorizing moves.