My Quick Repertoire

Greetings to all ! 

First of all , I'd like to thank you all for participating in this thread , your comments really helped me in my opening repertoire .

I'm happy with my choice of openings now , I found many of your tips very helpful when I finished my opening rep . Also , I realloted my study time , I now focus on practicing tactics and developing positional skills through reviewing GM games and playing . I occasionally check FCO for more info when I'm a bit confused in my lines , so I can refresh and broaden my opening knowledge once in a while .

All in all , thanks for everyone ! I'll see you around !

AlcherTheMovie.

AlcherTheMovie - First of all, I think you're on the right track.I've never formally studied just tactics or endgames by themselves - and nevertheless I'm a decent chess player. I put all my time into studying openings. Estragon thinks studying openings is not the right thing for you, because I think he is referring to an improper way of studying openings. At least to me, and maybe I'm not interpreting him correctly, he seems to think studying openings will reward you only with knowledge of memorized moves. However, if studied properly, the study of openings does not partition your improvement to just the first 5 moves.

To really study an opening, you should read articles or books, go over high-level games played in your opening, analyze theory and those games with a strong computer (like Houdini), and finally you need to play the opening. Reading articles and books will give you two things: technical theory, and ideas and problems of the opening. For example, in the Ruy Lopez black often wants to play a6-b5 in order to reduce the pressure on e5. Black's problem piece is invariably the queen's knight, Nc6. Going over high-level games will show you various plans for coping with the various problems and demonstrate common and strong ideas. Analyzing the opening/games with Houdini will help you understand why moves are played and familarize you with common tactics in your opening. Playing the opening will help you find problem lines and give you experience.

Clearly, if you study openings like this you gain a deeper understanding of your openings and improve your knowledge of common tactical operations. Even if you change openings later, you will still have gained an understanding of a position you didn't know before. Also, going over high-level games will expose you to interesting endgames, and show you how to convert wins and hold draws.

Again, Estragon's criticism of opening study is based upon a superficial chess study in general. If you study endgames by memorizing rook endgames, you'll miss out on general conceptions that are important. Openings are arguably the most important phase of a chess game - in order to even REACH a middle game or endgame, you first have to bang out the first dozen moves. If you maximize the strength of those first moves, then you will have a better middlegame/endgame to play. You have to first build a bridge across a river before you can conquer what's on the other side. This is why opening books are popular: Chess players value them. I don't think GMs deserve to be portrayed as greedy bloodsuckers because they provide material people value.

By the way, I'm not saying studying general middlgame themes, tactics, and endgames by themselves is bad, or worse than studying openings necessarily. I'm just saying that studying openings is certainly not "wrong" as several people have expressed.

Whoa ! 2 more replies , and both brought more ideas into my head :')

@Estragon

So ! It seems that you really don't like openings that much :) hehe !

Well I'm kinda super interested on openings , but not to the point that it became an obsession . I'm not gonna touch on your statement bout the GM's and their books/DVD's since that is your personal opinion . And definitely , I'll constantly practice tactics and endings :D

@FM VEGGIE-MONSTER 

Hi there ! I think our thoughts on openings are quite similar . My idea is that by studying a certain opening , I'll be familiarizing myself on what the tactical patterns look like on that certain position which appears almost every other game . Although I practice tactics everyday , I also make it a point that I learn something new from my opening repertoire . It might be swapping a minor piece to weaken some squares that constantly become a problem on my games , or trying out moves that potentially could be added to my "candidate moves list" etc .

--

I just have a question . I'm not really familiar with chess engines and stuff , would having one be a huge advantage for me ? And what does an engine do exactly to improve one's play ?

Cheers !

AlcherTheMovie

Yes, access to a strong chess engine is very important. An engine helps you critique your games as a whole. It might recommend at one point that you sacrifice a pawn you gained back in order to activate your pieces, something you missed during a game. Then you can remember that idea for that position in your later games. Engines are best for a difficult part of chess - how to win a winning position. Engines are strongest in the middlegame and endgame, where long forcing lines are more important. Sometimes you have to take their evaulation of an opening with a grain of salt - they are useful for finding opening ideas, but not as much so for evaluating an opening line. For example, Fritz11 thinks that the sicilian is almost +1 for white - white has an advantage, but it is obviously not that huge. Houdini (you can google houdini, and chess.com has a link to it for free) is much better in the opening phase, but I still wouldn't rely on it.

I have been playing the Caro-Kann for many years and have had generally good results with it.

A good defense to 1 d4 which is similar in some ways to the Caro-Kann is the Slav Defense (1 d4 d5  2 c4 c6).  Just as in the Caro-Kann, Black can develop his QB before hemming it in with P-e6.

Since the Caro-Kann and the Slav share similar themes, they are easy to study simultaneously.

The Slav setup can be played against almost any White opening.  For example, against your favorite move 1 c4, Black can play 1...c6 followed by 2...d5.

I also often play the London System as White (1 d4  2 Nf3  3 Bf4).  It is similiar to the Slav Defense with an extra tempo.