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It is not uncommon for amateurs to be told not to spend time on studding openings, however, amateurs are advised to learn opening theory. It is also not uncommon for amateurs to spend a large percentage of their time studding openings. . Once you understand opening theory, in theory you should be able to come out of the opening phase of a game nearly equal or better. However if you do not, if you come out of an opening badly what do you do then? This is what happened to me. In the end I came to realize that although I understood Opening Theory in general, I did not understand the nuances, why one move was better than another. I realized then that the Openings were nothing more than the best applications of Opening Theory and that by studding openings I could gain a deeper understanding. To minimize the amount of study needed I decided to learn one opening for white and one opening for black. For white it took me awhile to settle on the Bishops Opening. The reason I picked it was because you can play 2 Bc4 to almost any response to e4. I then studied and played a number of variations. The Berlin Defense is what you will encounter most often, which is based on 2…Nf6, attacking the e pawn. In some arcane tome I found the response 3Qe2. This variation led to a position that I understood and played well. Soon I learned to get to the same position almost regardless of blacks first few moves. Thus I was able to apply the same plan to most of my games as white. In this way I was able to get through the opening phase and have a plan for the middle game. After about a year I became board with this opening and have since been learning others. For black I chose the French. Often even if my opponent played 1d4, by playing 1…e3, I can get the French. As my rating increased I did have to learn the Nimzo-Indian and the Queen’s Indian. I still play the French as my primary when playing black, In summary if you are not coming out of the opening well you may want to consider studding some openings. Keeping in mind these principles: Minimize the number of openings you learn to 2 or 3. Select variations that results in positions you understand, or imbalances you like. Gain an understanding of the plan associated with the resulting position and how to take advantages of the resulting imbalance. When I say learn an opening I am only speaking of learning the first 10 or so moves, until all the pieces are active. Most of the time your opponent will not stay in book that long, or they will be using a data base and not really understand the resulting position. The lower level opening books such as Starting Out The French and The French Explained that teach you the opening by annotating complete games are much better, than the books like Play The French, as you gain a better understanding of the plan behind the various variations.

In both The Amateur’s Mind and How To Reassess Your Chess, Mr. Silman states that the battle between Knights and Bishops is one of the most important imbalances, and is the first imbalance introduced in both books. Mr. Silman teaches us stratagies for having the Bishop, the Night, or the Bishop Pair. He also discusses which pawn formation favor the Bishops and Nights. There is also some discussion on how having one or the other plays out in the end game. This is all good information when you are trying to decide what kind of center to establish or weather to exchange a Night for a Bishop. My personal experience has been that this imbalance has played only a minor role in my games. It is likely that this is due to the fact at my level it is uncommon to willing exchange material to set up such an imbalance. It seems that most Class C Players are move focused on setting up a material imbalance or attacking the king. Attacking the King prematurely is one of the key bad habits we amateurs have, and giving up this bad habit and replacing it with establishing imbalances has resulted in a nice increases of my rating. That said perhaps I should attempt to set up a Night vs Bishop imbalance? What have your experience been?

In the Book Form of this site, The Amateur’s Mind by Jeremy Silman is discussed from time to time. The most frequent criticism goes something like this: I already know what I am doing wrong. While it is true that Mr. Silman does point out common mistakes made my amateurs this book is much more than just that. The premise of the book is that we as Amateurs have developed a number of bad habits, and need to replace these bad habits with better ones. For example instead of making simple one move threats that are easily detected by our opponent, we should be looking at the imbalances that exist on the board and basing our moves on how to improve our position in light of these imbalances. This book also has rules that help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of the position. For example: “Knights love closed positions with locked pawns. Their ability to jump over other pieces makes the very valuable in such situations.” The book also has Tips such as: “Don’t ignore your opponent’s threats or ideas. Just because you have a superior or even winning position doesn’t mean there is nothing for your opponent to do.” For me this book was what helped me to begin to understand positional chess concepts. It also taught me what do to when there are no tactics, and also how to consider the consequences of tactics in light of the resulting position. For example is being up a pawn really worth closing your open file? I believe this book would be very beneficial for anyone between 1400 and 1600, who is looking to improve their positional understanding.

I will set up or accept only vote chess games with a 3 day duration. During the first 2 days team members will post recommended moves, and ideally the reasoning behind the move. During the last 24 hours team members will cast their votes for the move of their choice. As far as comments go, pointing out a problem with a recommended move is OK. Being demeaning to another team member is not.