How should you play when your opponent surprises you in the opening?
(Below is an edited transcript of Mat Bobula's lecture on 31 May 2021)
I will try to show you some examples because this is something very common for every chess player, sometimes you just got the position in the opening and you are not sure what to do.
But before I show you those examples, first thing we have to start with some short introduction about what is opening repertoire.
Later I'm gonna show you a couple of hints on basic principles and later i will show you some
examples from my experience okay so first of all you need to know about how to play in
the opening opening is the beginning of the game.
Of course so you know when you when you start to play chess you learn some basic principles:
You know that you should move your pawns into the center,
second most important thing is you have to develop your minor pieces,
third principle is you have to castle,
and also the the last one is develop your major pieces so for example something like that and this is something that every chess player needs to know those principles.
When your opponent surprises you, quite often a good strategy is just to follow those principles. Go back to the basics and just follow those 4 principles.
When you play more chess you have to you have to pick some openings that you want to play because you realize that in chess that are a lot of different openings.
So it's not enough to know principles right it's just not enough for you.
So you are starting to look for some openings, and for example some players are playing e4 right which is which is more common in the lower level, some people are playing d4, also when you play black you also play for example if your opponent plays 1.e4 some people play c5 for example
So every player who plays a little bit more needs to have their own opening repertoire, and usually you start with the with one move for white right when you play
1.e4 for example you have to learn how to play against a lot of different openings actually but usually your opening repertoire at the beginning is quite narrow.
So let's say you play 1.e4 you have to you have got only one answer against every opponent move right the same happens when you play
black right so someone plays let's say e4 and you play only i don't know only the Caro-Kann defense for example, later after some time your opening repertoire becomes
becomes slightly more um complicated right you have got for
example two possibilities let's say you play Caro-Kann but also you want to play something that is more sharp so you play Sicilian maybe.
I will show you that on my example okay because when i started to play
chess when my repertoire looked this way that of course after you know when when i
started to play in some tournaments as white i was always always i was playing like a d4
as white later i start with the very universal pattern.
I always follow that pattern so this is like a simplified Catalan.
That's what was my whole repertoire with white.
With black against e4 i was playing e6 and i was playing here d5 right and i was playing only Rubinstein variation in the French
And as black I was playing Queen's gambit, so that was my first repertoire.
Later after some time my repertoire become more complex i would say right i started
to play d4 and when my opponent responds here i i started to play i still wanted to
play plans with g3 but i played it in a slightly more complicated way i started with the with the c4 right and now i start i played Catalan right so you see it it was like the evolution,
I started with knowing only some basic principles how to play in the opening later i learned a couple of patterns and later i also uh i learned how to play in a more complicated way
and let's say last last step of the development was when i also started to play not only g3
but i also started to play you know some of the main lines right so this is like the
proper evolution of your opening repertoire.
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why.
You also need to know that despite of the fact that you have got your own opening repertoire you also should know at least some basics of other openings so for example even
even though I was playing d4, I watched some grandmaster's games or I just analyzed for myself for example some lines in the Ruy Lopez right (also called Spanish) because this
is one of the basic openings so despite of the fact you cannot your thinking cannot be that narrow that I will learn only openings that are uh that i play right you should it's
pretty important also to have at least you know minimum knowledge about
every other opening.
Of course you don't need to know them as deep as your repertoire but it's it helps you if you know some you know at least a little bit some other ideas right you can learn some other ideas sometimes you can even use use those ideas in your games so it's also pretty important.
I remember i had got a period in my life that I decided I have to study some of the openings out of my opening repertoire a little bit more, so i created something that is called second repertoire.
I just created like a second repertoire that I didn't want to play that second repertoire in important games, but you know in less important tournaments or something and my second repertoire looked this way that i played e4 and i learned how to play against Spanish it as I learned how to play against Sicilian and any other answers and when i was playing black i also learned how i also learned to play Sicilian right instead of the French and so on so this is also like that I really recommend you to create some you know some second repertoire right or alternative repertoire that you can also play
play in less serious games right and and it's it will give you like a huge boost right in your in your ideas because you have to deal with completely different types and completely different positions so this is what i really recommend and also you need to know
Even if you all the time you play d4 it's a general
chess culture, you need to know for example that that opening is called Spanish and you need to know at least you should know if you if you want to call yourself a chess player
that some at least some basic ideas.
For example, I think it was Capablanca who said that you cannot understand chess strategy if you have never played Ruy Lopez.
So this is also why I want to encourage you to play something like that okay so that was like a long introduction and now let's talk about let's try to answer the question how to react when your opponent surprises you. I decided to divide that into two parts:
One part of the you know that you are surprised that happens more often is when you just don't know the line, your opponent plays something, or you got a position that
you have never seen before so this is this is let's say one
and i would say most more common case.
You need to know how to react in such a positions.
Second case is when you know the opening that you're playing but your opponent obviously prepared something because your opponent knows that you play for example french so he prepared something special for you.
So this is this is definitely something that you also need to know how to react
because in this case preparation is pretty important.
It usually happens in the higher level i would say right because because when you play you know when 1200a are playing games are playing games online they usually don't prepare against each other. so preparation I mean that that you follow opponent games and you try to realize what is your opponent repertoire
and you try to find the you try to find the you know weak points in your opponent's repertoire and you want to play the line that you will get the advantage this is what I mean by preparation.
knows that london system is something like that bishop f4 and then e3 and so on and so on
so nowadays everyone knows that but 15 years ago it wasn't actually that popular right i had got 2000 rating my rating was like 2000, so i knew something about chess i knew something about repertoires but i remember one opponent played
bishop f4 against me and to be honest I had never seen such idea before so i was surprised, I was thinking this way:
First of all, what does my opponent want to do? Does my opponent threaten anything or
not? I didn't see i didn't see any threat.
So you see my opponent played bishop f4. I knew that okay my opponent doesn't create any direct threat to me this is also important try to think what does your opponent want to achieve?
I was thinking okay probably he just wants to develop pieces right so in this in this kind of situation the best strategy is gonna be just to follow some basic principles.
So this is why i mentioned those principles at the beginning right you wanna you wanna move your pawns into the center develop minor pieces later you wanna uh castle you wanna develop your major pieces so and this is what i did i played here opponent went e3 i went e6 okay opponent played something like bishop d3 i i played bishop p7 okay you can see that i directly follow all of my basic principles right
okay knight d to bishop b7, c3 knight d7
castling i played c5. I followed the Tartakower variation of the Queen's Gambit and you see my position after the opening is pretty good, despite my opponent surprising me by playing that bishop f4. I even didn't know that it is called London, I just decided to follow some basic principles and just got a good position after the opening.
If your opponent surprises you don't want to try to win your game immediately, you wanna get a good position you don't wanna lose immediately and get a good position after the opening.
Second example is a little bit funny because i remember i was seven years old so i didn't know uh i didn't know much about chess and as as i told you i was playing that simplified Catalan.
But I remember that at the beginning of the game there was some confusion, I think my opponent talked to me something you know how kids are playing and I just made a mistake and by accident I touched the e pawn and i was a little bit panicked, because i have got no idea how to play 1.e4
All my life I just play the 1.d4 but and then suddenly i touch the e pawn right so actually okay i have to say that more it's not like that opponent surprises me but I surprised myself but um yeah okay and i remember opponent
went there and I just remember that in friendly games against my dad i used to play Ruy Lopez this is the reason i decided to go this way. I decided to play bishop b5
and i just remembered we played something like this
and here so you see it was pretty actually opponent when that i went here
opponent when there i went c3 okay castling i went d4 and you can see that here uh there is a
pretty good position because i have got my pawns in the center and later i just remember i developed my minor pieces and somehow i got a pretty decent position after the opening.
So it's pretty important to know some basics of the other openings.
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and take a it was e4 e5 okay he used to play e5 right here
knight knight here here knight f6 okay he he felt pretty comfortable at the
moment
because you can see that this is just it is called Four Knight's game it's nothing special
right this is just a completely standard position but then suddenly
his opponent played knight takes e5 and he was completely surprised.
His rating and also his opponent's rating was around 2000 so he couldn't suspect that opponent just blundered the knight because you can see that knight protects the pawn and he was thinking what is going on?
He was thinking okay what can i do first of all if you're not sure what to do, you should follow some principles second thing avoid any complications so he decided okay I'm gonna avoid any complications.
Of course obviously he has to take it white plays d4
and you you know you know nowadays it's pretty clear that the best move, after the game he checked everything with the engine and knight g6 and black can defend somehow
against that attack this is this is nowadays like what what should you know right e5
that is like knight g8 and black white has got an initiative, but black's position is pretty good and usually black wins that but during the game he was completely surprised he had got no idea maybe this is like you know some so there is a line like this so if you will try to keep the piece on the board maybe that attack is too strong he cannot survive that so he decided, okay, in this case I'm just gonna to give that material back to my opponent because I will not have my knight I'll be not up a knight but at least the position is going to be more
solid and white will have got no initiative.
So he decided to play queen e7 takes queen takes, white played something like here black went bishop b4 you see he now he decided to avoid complications
and now he follows some basic principles how to play right so here actually d5 so you see
another pawn goes into the center and so on so on and and in the end he
got an equal position after the opening and in the end he won this game somehow.
A key moment was here when your opponent is playing something very sharp and you're confused not sure what to do very often if your opponent sacrifices something usually they are doing that on purpose because they want to get some kind of initiative so if you're if you're if you don't know what to do in this kind of if you don't know how to defend a safe option is just to give that piece back. So this is this is the story of my friend.
Let me tell you an example from my game i was playing i was playing actually
black and my opponent suddenly went to g4
and i was so confused because that move doesn't make any sense and i was thinking what's the idea of this move right upon an opponent plays g4, never
seen such a ridiculous move it was OTB game so i knew that my opponent didn't make a mouse slip!
I can capture but again probably opponent prepares something. If opponent offers you a pawn and you have got no idea about the line probably there is something right that opponent because this is the first move that opponent expects. I was thinking after g4 opponent will go e4, I will i'm gonna okay i will show you the line i was thinking i will go back opponent probably will move e5
I will move my knight to d5 opponent will probably go c4 i move my knight and opponent probably will go here
and I asked myself do I really want to play such a position? Because I'm up a pawn that's true but my development is not very good also you can see that opponent has got you know a monster center. So I was just thinking, I don't want to do that i don't wanna play the line that my opponent prepared because he for sure was prepared.
He had got some kind of preparation what to do after after uh knight takes g4
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So I decided I'm gonna play save, I decided not to accept that pawn i want d5 g5 i want knight e4 right okay and you can see opponent opponent went something like knight c3 right i remember i captured pawn takes and actually now i decided to follow basic principles.
So i decided to play something like you know bishop f5 e6 bishop e7
you know c5 i was just developing my minor pieces later i just i just castled and
developed my major pieces and yeah i got a good position right.
so last two examples this is something that happens pretty often so don't go into the most obvious line usually if you want to play safe usually i recommend you to avoid
complications because you know nothing about the line.
And now let me tell you a little bit about about you know that what happens less often but it happens quite often in the higher level, that you expected something else from your opponent and actually opponent played something else and what to do in this kind of position maybe i will just i have got pretty fresh example of something like that because yesterday i played the OTB tournament first tournament after a very long break and I had got such a
situation.
I was playing it was a rapid tournament but i was playing against the opponent that i played against many times in the past so actually i knew what I should expect
right and i played i was playing quite i played d4 and usually in in previous games she
used to play c5 right so it was like a Benoni but suddenly she played e6
and i was thinking at the moment okay e6 and here i remember i i just usually you
know what should you play in the second move but I was very surprised and i was thinking she prepared something against me because i used to play c4
i didn't know what should i expect, because in the past she always used to play c5 so after e6 i
was i had got two to two ways of playing i can play a standard way like c4 and so on but then opponent can do something that i don't expect maybe i will you know go under some preparation and I will go to i will get a bad position and i was thinking what to do and i was thinking okay i have never played e4 in the first move but i play french as black right you know french defense
how to play a french as black so i decided after one minute of thinking i decided I'm gonna surprise her and I'm gonna play e4 and she went d5 and actually we got the position that
that i didn't know much about this position right as white and she didn't know much about this
position as black right so actually we both were surprised so
actually i got a slightly better position after the opening because i knew it a little bit
better than my opponent right but that moment was absolutely crucial that when i decided to change my standard opening c4 and play something that I
have never played before because i knew that opponent prepared something for that so this is this is something that happened yesterday.
usually capture that right and you need to know that for a very long time
to avoid some weird lines i use i used to play here knight of three in the second move and c4 and against the queen is gonna be texted.
I used to play something like this queen takes c4 and so on. I checked in the indie database that my opponent is playing something like that so i prepared everything i just i just reviewed the line and so on and i came to the game and my opponent played d5 i played here and now my opponent played a6 and now i was okay.
I'm surprised right because i did not expect a6 i expected knight f6 and i was thinking
okay what is going on what's the purpose of this move and i just realized that opponent wants
to still probably wants to play the queen's gambit accepted but in a slightly
different way right because if i play c4 if black captures queen a4 is not the
the move because after queen a4 move that i usually play opponent is going to play b5 and you can see there is a problem because queen is under attack and that pawn is well protected
so that actually is a problem so what do you need to know in this
moment again i was thinking "what should i do in this position?"
I will try to change it a little bit and i decided to uh to play g3 and i decided opponent
went here i decided to go here I made the castle, I played b3 so i played something that I used to play at the at the beginning of my adventure with a chess - I
decided to play something like this simplified Catalan because i really wanted to avoid
my opponent's preparation so you also need to react to that what happens on the board it's very important to observe your opponent. It's very important you need to know does your opponent play fast?
A couple of key points is try to follow some basic
principles when you're surprised avoid any complications
because if you because probably your opponent is prepared for the complications when there are complications it's very easy to make a mistake and also another thing is sometimes try to think maybe you can also surprise your opponent by changing moves order or picking the the other line that your opponent does not expect.
So those are some basic principles how to play when your opponent wants to surprise
you when your opponent surprises you hopefully i really hope this is going to help you to understand the topic.
