opening repertoire question.

The term repertoire comes from the performing arts world and refers to "a stock of plays, dances or pieces that a company or performer is prepared to perform." The definition implies that a performer needs to demonstrate that he can perform the play, dance or piece before he is allowed to go in stage. It isn't enough to read a script or watch a youtube video, The performer needs to show the skill. Does the term have the same meaning in chess? To say something is in your repertoire do you have to have played games that clearly show the ideas of the opening (demonstrating skill)  or is it enough simply to be familiar with the theory (demonstrating skill in your own games not being so important)?

A similar question...would it mean something different to perform an opening as opposed to play an opening?

Yes, what people do not understand is that just because you play the move 1...c5 against 1.e4 does not mean the Sicilian is in your repertoire.  If you have zero understanding of what you are doing, you have no repertoire.  You are simply playing random moves that happen to me the first couple of moves in the Sicilian Defense.

 

Think of a court case.  You have circumstantial evidence, and you have proof.

 

Someone that says that I murdered the store manager because they saw a picture of me on surveillance in the store at 8:43pm on Saturday night is circumstantial evidence, and the equivalent to a player playing the random moves 1...c5 and 2...g6.  There could have been many people in the store at 8:43pm.

 

Now if instead, you found the gun lying on the floor along with the bullet in the victim's head, you can prove that THAT bullet came from THAT gun, that finger prints on the gun trigger matches my finger prints, and that a picture from surveillance shows a gun holstered in my back pocket, now you have proof that I shot the sales clerk and you have an actual case, similar to if said person can explain to you in words what he is doing with that hyperaccelerated Dragon that he happened to play.  He can actually explain the ideas behind the hyperaccelerated Dragon.  It is an actual part of that player's repertoire.  It is not just random pushing of wood that circumstantially happens to be the accelerated dragon.

 

A repertoire is a cohesive plan that consists of a well thought out set of moves.  A repertoire can be more than one opening.  Your repertoire could consist of you playing both the Sicilian and the French against 1.e4.  Obviously you can only play one or the other in any one given game, but both openings are in your repertoire if you consciously play both with an understanding and well thought out plan with each.

 

But if say, some random 800 player plays 1...c6 against 1.e4, and someone asks why he played this move, and he says "I don't know", and after 2.d4, he plays 2...d6, he is randomly pushing wood, and does not have anything resembling a Caro-Kann "repertoire", he is just pushing wood and making random moves.  The Caro-Kann has the specific idea of contesting the e4-Pawn by playing ...d5, but with the ability to maintain a pawn instead of a Queen on d5 if captured and to remove the e-pawn if White does not capture or advance, and using the c-pawn instead of the e-pawn so as not to block your own Bishop.

 

Hope this explains the difference between having an actual repertoire, and playing random moves that circumstancially happen to be the first couple of moves of a named opening.

My repertoire is based off ideas and practice that I understand such as imbalance and hypermodern activities.

The game is more enjoyable when I can achieve playable positions and the middle game planning is straight forward.

Transpositional opportunities are a bonus.  

A cohesive plan that consists of a well thought out set of moves is certainly a big part of what a repertoire is but thinking about the artistic definition maybe it is more than that. When applied to chess it would be something like  A stock of openings a player is ready to perform. When you read a chess book there is usually a diagram at the end of a line with a comment by the author why one side is better. I think the performance part of the definition comes into play not in the moves that lead to the diagrammed position but in the moves after it. The comment could be white has more than enough for the pawn.....or white has the advantage because he has the better minor piece. It would then be up to the player to prove these advantages over the board. The question is if he is unable to do so, can he say the opening is in his repertoire? I don't mean to say he has to do it every time but he should be able to succeed at least sometimes to say the opening is in his repertoire.....unless you would consider these things outside the scope of opening knowledge. Technically what happens after these diagrams are middle games and end games but on the other hand I haven't ever heard anyone talk about middle game repertoires or end game repertoires.

Does the worst comedian in the world not have a repertoire? Just because  he's a shht performer, does not change the fact that he has a repertoire of jokes and stories to tell. There may be a term that I'm unaware of to describe 'the stock of plays' of a terrible performer, other than repertoire, that may be applicable to chess too. But this feels like unnecessary gatekeeping to me.

The opening repertoire of GM is obviously more impressive than that of a lower rated player. Most likely, the relevance of a repertoire is directly correlated to a players' skill.  But where do you draw the line? Some repertoires are better than others. Compared to super GMs, everyone else is an incompetent amateur. Most repertoires are sub par works in progress, but they are opening repertoires. 

 

 

If you think about it, chess is murder.

 

Chess is a well thought out, premeditated and pre-planned assault on the opposing king with intent to kill!

Just when I heard it all. We got:

1. Performing arts

2.  Court

3. Murder

4. Comedians 

In one chess.com thread

So much for chess on just being a board game.

What it comes down to for me is whether you can demonstrate the ideas of the openings you play in your actual games. You don't have to play perfectly...just well enough that if someone plays over your game that they can see the idea.

This sort of gets to the heart of my original thought which was that a performer needs to do something more than have a script memorized to have a repertoire.....that there needs to be a certain level of quality about the work, In the case of this comedian perhaps a different comedian could tell the same jokes and stories and be funny enough that any producer would love to put him onstage while nobody would want to hire the bad comedian because he just doesn't tell the stories or jokes very well. Maybe he doesn't even make eye contact with the audience. The equivalent of the bad comedian in chess would be someone who memorizes moves of an opening but doesn't really understand the positions the memorized moves lead to or doesn't know what to do if the opponent deviates from the moves he memorized. The problem with this line of thought though ,which I think you were getting at is, how much does one need to understand to say someone has a repertoire. It would seem too elitist to say you need to have the understanding of a master to say you have a repertoire but I feel it should be something more than simply knowing what the moves are....there should be some understanding of the ideas behind the moves too. How much understanding is necessary may be an interesting question to ponder. I feel it should at least be enough that one can see the ideas of the opening in one's game which probably can be accomplished even in the games of lower rated players.

What counts as a repertoire? If a CM plays specific moves against other specific moves from the starting position until move 25, does that count? What if an IM can wipe that same CM off the board in those same openings 19 out of 20 times, even though he/she doesn’t regularly play them? What if Carlsen can do the same to that IM? What if Stockfish can do the same to Carlsen?

For all practical purposes and in the typically used language of chess literature, an opening repertoire consists of pre-chosen moves you will play against particular moves of your opponent beginning from the starting position to as far as your memory allows, be it 3 or 43 moves. If you don’t remember a move for a given position, then you are no longer in the world of “opening repertoire” and now in the world of positional assessment.

The art side of the definition of repertoire refers to being prepared to perform. I don't really see playing a memorized sequence of moves as a performance. To me Its what happens after the sequence of memorized moves ends that the performance begins.