building an opening repertoire around D4

Quite the opposite applies. Haven't you ever heard about ratings inflation, caused (mainly, but not solely) by the broadening of the rated players' pool?

pfren: I have also heard of rating deflation within the USCF pool. (See http://www.glicko.net/ratings/cl-article.pdf) The one expert and three masters I knew from my high school and college teams all lost 100-200 rating points from 1995-2002. Mark Glickman, who now chairs the USCF ratings committee, put in fixes to adjust the rating system back upward. I hope it worked.

I notice that for all your vaunted FIDE ratings, you can't manage more than 1831 here for Live Chess on chess.com. I suspect that says more about chess.com deflation than your ability, but I still find it curious.

Nor do you respond to any of the counterpoints I have brought up.

I'd agree that it doesn't matter as much for class players to study openings as masters, but it still matters. If someone wants to take your Capablanca purist approach, that's fine with me.

Nonetheless, I hold to my point that studying the openings as a class player isn't a waste of time and doesn't hold you back. You are still studying chess. The principles, with some minor differences, which apply in the opening, apply in the middlegame and apply in the endgame.

Tactics, strategy, pawn structure, piece play. You find those aspects in the opening too. And if you save fifteen minutes on the clock and feel more confident as you play a rated game, all the better I say.

If you are studying openings, you are studying chess, and you are getting better at the game.

Maybe that doesn't fit your vision of how class players should learn the game, but if it works, it works. It's up to you to demonstrate that it hinders.

Tell me how your theory would apply to Bobby Fischer. Tell me how Bobby Fischer's study of openings before he was a master held him back.

Here's a wonderful link to a pdf for Ken Smith's Chess Improvement Course.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101691514/Kenneth%20Smith%27s%20Improvement%20Course.pdf

Ken Smith, deceased, was a remarkable American master who influenced thousands of chess players and was an icon on the American tournament circuit with his trademark top hat. He was passionate about playing chess and educating players coming up. He started an influential chess publishing company providing a start to writers such as Andrew Soltis. Smith coauthored books with Larry Evans. Smith was employed as an assistant by Bobby Fischer in Fischer's epic quest for the World Championship in 1972. Smith also became one of the top poker players in the world.

pfren has seen fit to disparage Smith repeatedly in this topic. Smith and pfren had about the same accomplishment in terms of FIDE ratings -- though I wonder if Smith would have done better had he lived in Europe instead of Texas and had more access to FIDE tournaments.

People will remember Ken Smith and for good reasons IMO. When pfren dies, he will be forgotten almost immediately as a minor European master.

Read the link and see who you find more persuasive -- Ken Smith or pfren.

Did you know that Ken was also a poker player and whenever he won a big pot he would stand up and yell 'What a player!'

Personally I studied opening for like 2 years as a 1300 player (not very much but i did get through a book or two in the starting out series). My rating would not change. I just did that and tactical puzzles when I had the time and played lots of games. Then I read The Amateur's Mind by Jeremy Silman and my rating went to 1650 in less than a year. Then I spent lots of time learning tactical puzzles to keep up with my good friend in tactics, learned Silman's Complete Endgame manual and how to attack with pawns in the Kings Indian Defense. In the next year my rating went to 1816. Then finally once I had tactical and positional strengths I learned lots about pawn structures and middlegame planning, and then once I studied that I finally moved on to openings and going over GM games involving my openings. I read through 1 book on pawn structure and 3 books on openings. I also watched all of GM Khachiyans videos here on chess.com to further develop my positional, tactical, and planning skills. After that my rating went up to about 2050 after 3 tournaments, and it's funny because even then 3-4 mainline openings I play as white, I invented my responses to black over the board. Turns out they are well known sidelines that promise comfortable equality, but I didnt need to study openings to find something decent to play.

So based on my experiences I agree with pfren. Dont fall into the studying openings before you learn how to walk trap. Learn positional play and tactics VERY WELL, and then learn pawn structure plans. Once you have these tools you are prepared to understand the opening and benefit from learning them as well as GM games. This means you will be class A before you really want to sink time into openings. Otherwise you wont get many noticable advantages from it, since you wont be able to punish them from deviating from the main lines.

I don't know much about Ken Smith, but if I had a chess book publishing company, I'd try to convince beginners that the best way to improve is to study openings -- and that the best way to study openings was buying dozens of my books as well.

I read through the PDF hoping to find something enlightening, but it's basically just an advertisement for his books.

pfren, on the other hand, posts actual useful advice without having a vested interest in getting you to buy books.  While his posts come with a little bit of attitude sometimes, I certainly find his position more persuasive than a guy who is telling me I need several books, and being courteous enough as to list his catalog number with them.

Yes, interesting article.

"

Because so many people were on their rating floor, the EB at that time agreed to

create a 200-point floor. This is where it stands now. Coupled with the drop in the

rating floor was an increased influx of scholastic players into the USCF, who were

improving more quickly than the rating system could track them. Both of these

factors, in combination, resulted in what seemed to be rating deflation, where

players who were otherwise at stable strength were consistently losing to young

underrated players. The EB claimed that the USCF was rapidly losing members

who were frustrated by unfair rating decreases, and wanted the Ratings Committee

to address this problem. In response, the Ratings Committee developed a

substantially revised rating system. The details of the system had been worked out

by 1997, but USCF office difficulties prevented its implementation until early 2001

"

Though this is a different point than what I was talking about.

Phelon said he studied only openings and tactics, at 1300, which certainly sounds like a bad plan. I think whats best is probably always a balanced approach, which I never did either. Openings were always a phase I ignored. But its something I am trying hardcore to fix in my latest incarnation. We'll see.

But again, my observations about improving players in general (not me, I am probably too old to improve much now but I am trying again) comes from watching today's young scholastics, who I have lots of chances to observe. They are getting trained by coaches, they have huge leaps in their ratings, and boy do they know their openings backward and forward.

Their results do not lie.

I agree, and ya with me it was some tactics, but mostly opening heavy study.

And the reason they are improving is because they have a coach to explain the pawn structure plans and piece set up of the various openings they play to them, and then whenever they play a game their coach can critique their play and show them ways to correct their positional/tactical mistake. Not to mention I'm sure the coach gives them tactical puzzles, or a tactical workout all the time, as well as teaching them GM games to explain positional, pawn structure, and tactical ideas.

Basically they are being flooded with chess information, motivated to improve, and their basic chess framework: tactics, positional play, pawn structure plans, and endgames, are being built up heavily, as well as their specialized chess knowledge: openings. You are just noticing the openings :), but honestly knowing openings isn't effective without the base knowledge.

Just like if a boxer hasn't even tried strength training or conditioning it doesn't matter how much specialized knowledge he has of styles and punches, he's going to be demolished. Where as when he is already physically powerful and has good conditioning, his style, execution of various punches and tricks becomes quite important.

interesting discussion....which I am sure has been carried on hundreds of times with the same 2 camps forming lol.

I guess I lean slightly toward the "dont get too wrapped up into openings until your are fairly strong" camp.

I have no doubt that one can easily make it to class A without being a serious opening theory guy. Of course one cant be an idiot in the opening and do well, but as some have said, learn PRINCIPLES and you will generally come out of the opening in at least ok shape

I would think that especially with d4 one could do ok with slightly less specific knowledge simply because d4 doesnt usually lead to a super sharp game as much as e4 does.

I'm 1862 uscf, based on like 28 games or so, and to be honest, in most of the games so far I have been out of book by move 4 or 5, sometimes earlier.

Im pretty sure I can make it to expert without learning a TON of opening theory.

That being said, I am superclueless about the endgame and can say that maybe 3 of my tourney games ever make it to any kind of endgame struggle?

My calculation skills and visualization arent THAT great (im 46, lol)

So how did I get to 1862 pretty quickly? I dont know but pretty much just trying to get solid positions and notice when the opponent makes a mistake..which he WILL at my level

I work the most on tactics and lately I AM "studying" openings some, but my memory sux.

I have gotten some of my wins based on the other guys just playing sort of weak opening play. Not that I burned them with a deep trap or some memorized idea, but just that they were too passive or I found ways to try to impede their development and they get tied in knots etc

Ill give one example game from my last tourney:

So the game was sort of lost in the opening, but not due to some long memorized variation but due to basic principles

Oh certainly, if I left the impression all they study is openings, then my mistake. The kids are absolute whizzes at tactics and have good positional understanding. The only thing I havent really seen is endgames, I dont know how well they know those, but at the scholastic level the majority of games are G30 or G45 so endgames play a lesser role anyway.

But they are balanced.

I also went through Silman "Reassess your chess", which did nothing for me. But I came from a different background, my very first chessbook, when I was about 8 or so, (and a truly horrible first book for someone) was "New Ideas in Chess" by Larry Evans, which I read multiple times at that age and dog eared it. But as I read Reassess you chess, all I could think was how that book was virtually a modern day revision of the Evans book, but with "Bishop vs Knight" thrown in, perhaps to make it seem less obvious. Space, Time, Force, and Pawn structures were things I learned before really knowing pins, forks, and discovered attacks very well. Ah, if only I had someone at that age to tell me tactics was what I should be studying most heavily...

I guess this thread will have one less expert of your ass polluting it then.

Always start with endgames.  That's obvious.  Know how to finish.  This will tell you where to go in your games.  You need direction.

And once you have some of the basic endgames so you can actually play a game that ends in checkmate, it's great to start tactics.  Learn the basic's of pins, skewers, etc.  You need to know how to get those advantages.

But you do not need to be 1800's to start with basic opening's.  You want to start practicing some of the common one's much early.  Maybe you only look at one or two lines of some of the big ones, but there is a very important reason to studying them: they teach you positional subtleties that the student sometimes doesn't "get" when told with words. 

When you are playing chess regularly, you should choose e4 or d4 for white and have at least one response idea to each of those for black.  And you should have some understanding of where you want to take it.  It will veer off quite quickly at first, and you will need to use the standard opening advice (develop, control the center, rooks to open files, etc.).  But studying openings helps you see examples of good choices.  What are good ways to open files?  When can you keep the tension?  What situations are good to castle queen side?  It's learning patterns.

Definitely focus on endgame and tactics.  But it's foolish to avoid openings and have no repertoir at all.

I agree, and that is what all the good young players are doing nowadays.

I never had a repertoire, and the result is pretty much everyone I face gets a better early middlegame. I am plowing through Watson's opening series right now.

I am learning something memorizing too. Some positions/move orders I have a harder time "remembering/trying to figure out" and I discovered they are all sequences that leave general classical openings principals behind, like positions where a piece is moved twice, or a little prophylactic a3/h3 type move. So the general lesson for me in particular - I was always sticking to classical principals for too long in the opening, while the battle was already taking shape on the board. Thats why I have been losing the initiative.

His Mastering the Chess Openings series?  You probably wouldn't like the Leningrad Dutch: Early queen, side knight, knight moved twice, etc.

What are you playing against 1.e4 and 1.d4?

i think you are misreading my post, sticking to those principals too long into an opening is what is getting me into trouble.

And Watson is the guy who wrote "Modern Chess Strategy", which, if you have read it, is a skewering of most of the so-called "general principals" in chess.

Sveshnikov Sicilian and Benko type positions. Of course mostly I wind up in some anti position. I feel silly saying I play the Sveshnikov, since mostly it turns into a c3 sicilian or grand prix or closed, or a gambit of some sort. Same with the Benko.

Yeah I figured you played stuff like this. These openings are very dynamic in that you are giving yourself potential weaknesses like a backward pawn, a space disadvantage, loss of material and you must play very actively to get compensation. In positions like these natural moves don't really work out. You can't "break the rules" and give yourself a backward pawn and then expect to play natural moves for the rest of the game. In the Sveshnikov even White is dancing around the edge of the board to take advantage of Black's 'weird' moves. Alekhine said something about meeting odd moves with odd moves once. 

I'm not one to judge anyone's choices but these aren't exactly things you can just pick up and play. It's not that your opponents will play like Karpov and squeeze you but that Black's position is simply complicated to play while White can get away with normal moves for a good while. But ok if you like these it wouldn't be much fun to drop them. I do think it's important to note that you will be required to play some 'unnatural' moves even in the opening. 

I had a position like this in Alekhine's defence that gave me a lot of grief:

I ran out of space??

Ok anyway I got that position a few times and I doubt my opponents knew the theory. I sure didn't. Black moved the knight 3 times and the bishop twice. White developed the knights before the bishop. Now Black can win a pawn and I'm sure all my opponents had simply overlooked this. However in ALL the games White found 1...Bxf3 2.gf N8d7 3.O-O-O de 4.f5! And it turned out that my opponents had "blundered" into an equal position. Yes it turns out that although Black is up a pawn White has compensation. And all he had to do was move the knights before the bishops.

When I looked up the position to see if I screwed up I saw that 1...c6 was the move I was supposed to play. At that point I pretty much threw in the towel for 1....Nf6. There was no way I'd find 1...c6 otb in a similar situation and I also didn't like the idea of winning a pawn meaning nothing. But sometimes this is what you have to be up to when you play this way.

Well if you read my post, those arent the positions I am getting. Its just what I started to study since I decided to build a repetoire.

In fact none of my latest tournament games have actually featured those openings. Thats why I said I felt silly saying I play them. Of course I just started back OTB play so I am sure I will.

But no, my problems in openings are universal. I posted a game earlier in this thread that is typical of how I misplay openings.

Thanks for taking the time to post the game. You made a nice comeback there.

He does have a point though as far as the type of position you got into. Playing the black side of a Maroczy bind is obviously different than playing, say, a QGD. At least it's more complicated/tricky as far as the ideas go and you're more likely to get in big trouble if your opponent knows what he's doing and you don't. 

I know you didn't mean to get into a Maroczy but when you play c5 on the second move then you probably do need to know those lines, as you say.