Lajos Portisch:
"The purpose of the opening is to get to a playable middlegame"
Its not so much the memorization of moves, but the ideas behind those moves, like piece placement, and pawn structure. Why do the pieces go to certain squares? Why do the pawns go to certain squares?
You want your pieces on the best squares possible so you have a playable middlegame. If you go "out of book" you risk placing something on a weak square, creating a weak pawn. or weak square.
"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)
"... the average player only needs to know a limited amount about the openings he plays. Providing he understands the main aims of the opening, a few typical plans and a handful of basic variations, that is enough. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)
"... I think people tend to be afraid of the main lines. They think: ... sure, I'm going to take up (say) 5 Bg5 against the Semi-Slav, once I've got time and learned it properly. ... My advice is - don't bother. The more you learn anyway, the more you'll recognize how little you know. ... 5 Bg5 is a good move - get it on the board, get ready to fight, and see what happens.
Sure, there will come a time, whether on move two or move twenty, when your knowledge of theory runs out and you have to decide what to do on your own. ... sometimes you will leave theory first, sometimes your opponent. Nothing will stop this happening. It happens in every well-contested GM game at some point, usually a very significant point. This is a part of the game: an important part, something you have to get better at. ... to improve you have to challenge yourself; ..." - IM John Cox (2006)
"... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... It is especially critical not to continually fall into opening traps – or even lines that result in difficult positions ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2007)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627062646/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman81.pdf
"... For inexperienced players, I think the model that bases opening discussions on more or less complete games that are fully annotated, though with a main focus on the opening and early middlegame, is the ideal. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2010)
"The way I suggest you study this book is to play through the main games once, relatively quickly, and then start playing the variation in actual games. Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. There is time enough later for involvement with the details, after playing your games it is good to look up the line." - GM Nigel Davies (2005)
thanks!
Hi All! With respect to the openings, i understand that later on, at a high level, people consider learning opening lines very necessary. What i don’t understand is if you do an opening line and the other person makes only one different move, the it would seem to sort of go out the window, so what exactly is the point? I understand there must be a point, since it is done by almost all high level players, but i do not understand this issue. Thoughts?
As mentioned by others, the point of the opening is to get to a playable middlegame and it should be added that if you play the same set of openings often enough, you begin to see what middlegame strategies and tactics tend to evolve from each opening's middlegames. For example, the Bishop's Open and Vienna Game both try to get in an early f4 move, after which they often castle O-O-O and try to Pawn Storm Black's K-Side. The French Defence and the Caro-Kann often begin their counterattacks with ...c5 and a Q-side attack often becomes the best strategy. Etc. Etc.
So if you understand the ideas behind the opening, one out-of-book move does not necessarily change the strategy unless it opens up new possibilities you don't want to pass up.
Additionally, if you're familiar with the opening, you don't have to use much clock time to make the initial moves. For example the Caro-Kann Advance Variation beginning 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 Bf5 4 Nf3 e6 would take me less than 30 seconds to play as Black. That basically saves a typical 2 1/2 minutes for deep thinking at key points in, say, a 30 min OTB game which typical averages about a minute per move.
Hi All! With respect to the openings, i understand that later on, at a high level, people consider learning opening lines very necessary. What i don’t understand is if you do an opening line and the other person makes only one different move, the it would seem to sort of go out the window, so what exactly is the point? I understand there must be a point, since it is done by almost all high level players, but i do not understand this issue. Thoughts?