building an opening repertoire around D4

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...

This thread has been flooded by experts of my ass, which don't have the slightest idea about their claims- so, tracking off. Regards.

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. 

I posted your game with commentary after feeding it to a computer.  Hope you don't mind:

Well, thats some of it anyway! Maybe Houdini got exhausted.

But I am commiting to playing the Sicilian and learning the theory. I am semi-retired now so I have some time. Ducking theory by playing cheap junk is what I used to do.

The bongcloud is OP though so that doesn't count.

Not studying openings will get you to around 1800-1900 pretty comfortably, but at that point the opposition is so good you're wasting your time and making things to frustrating to not learn openings. Anybody below that you can beat with tactics and general strategy principles fairly easily if you're good enough.

Playing d4 and e4? or playing stuff like b3? Playing b3 or g3 or something, maybe I agree with you.

Also it's much harder to do than to simply sit down and learn about some openings for a month or two, and then go up a few hundred rating points when youre a 1900 player.