Openings and Ana Cramling
I'm sure by now even the most basic Western player of the game knows the name Ana Cramling. She's earned the recognition with multiple titles including Women's Grand Master, and more. I'm sure I couldn't begin to list her titles, but she's darned easy to find on YouTube where she gives free lessons to players at all levels, from 400 to 2000.
Yes, I'm an avid watcher and often use her material as homework material for my ChessKids. She's also the source of a lot of the quotes on my Chess Gems blog post.
As I said I'm avid watcher and even watch when she and her mother (GM Pia Cramling) comment on each others tournament games.
I watch regularly on my own, but also for this blog and homework assignments. Her material is dead easy to find and she even has a couple of her own channels on YouTube.
In particular I paid close attention to her rating development videos. She's has one for Under 400 and she makes the most cringy faces I've seen in a long time in that one. I didn't have to even take notes for that one. Just followed along.
I did the same for the Under 800 video and again just followed along. I didn't even have to make any notes or anything. If you're just starting out, I highly recommend those two videos.
When I watched the Under 1200 video I didn't have to take any notes but I did watch through it several times and had to replay a couple of sections, in order to understand her points. Please keep in mind, at best I've just barely reached 1000 rating on Chess.com (and fallen back again because of medical problems and surgeries).
I'm now watching the Under 1600 video and this one is work. I started out watching that video daily and I still review it regularly and yes I took quite a few notes that I had to re-write a couples of times. Ana sometimes skips around topics. She's also multi-lingual which could cause some problems for some people, but so am I. So I'm doing ok there.
Ok, so what's the point here?
Recently Ana made a comment in another of her videos, that she "stopped studying openings years ago". That made stop the video because I'm finding, at at my level that not very many people can play an opening line and give the right response that would lead to a win. I often, lately, have to go to the calculation method of play and that's not the strongest part of my game.
Short of solid coaching and a lot of practice, I obviously have a lot of work to do, and it wont end soon. When someone like Ana can rattle off 5 to 10 possibilities for a game position, I really have a lot of work to do (and it wont end soon).
