Return to Chess 11 | Preparing for a Surprise Tournament

Hey, everyone.  Fortunately, I am blessed to have the opportunity to play in a tournament tomorrow!  I'm super excited, especially since I did not know if I was going to be able to have the opportunity, so all thanks to the most high for allowing me to be able to play this Saturday.  Today, I've been working on establishing what I will do if my opponents play an opening other than 1.d4 and 1.e4, which I probably see in 97 % percent of my lower-level games.

Firstly, I worked on a defense against c4, the English opening.  This opening, although seldom played against me, has been the bane of my chess existence for a long time.  A member of our club, Eli (shoutout to you, Eli), crushes me with this opening time and time again, yet I have not bothered to look at a potential weapon against it.  A big thank you to Chess Vibes (a YouTube channel) for aiding me with a recommendation.

Secondly, I looked at games with the Reti opening, or Nf3 on move one.  This one was a little more tricky, since a lot of Reti games end up transposing.  However, this led me to another self-realization: at my level of chess, most of the time I will not be winning or losing a game based upon the opening.  If I just play chess and play normal moves in the opening, then I will definitely get chances to win later; it all depends on how well (or poorly) I end up playing.

Jack