Rushing queen out

Dude don't lose your knight. Thats your defender of the King side check this out.

http://www.chess.com/blog/X_PLAYER_J_X/sicilian-defence

http://www.chess.com/blog/X_PLAYER_J_X/sicilian-defence-1

Try www.365chess.com OPENING EXPLORER.

There is something you touched on in your article which I think applies here. I didn't mention this in my post, but I wasn't expecting a conversation, so I can mention it now.

There are two types of advantages in chess. There's a playing advantage and a position advantage. The position advantage, is the number that you get if you put your position into a computer. It's a simple measurement of pawn units, +3.64, - 0.31 etc.) But there's another more subtle advantage. The position advantage represents the end results if both players play the best possible move, but there's another advantage represented by how easy those moves are to find. If you are in a position where the computer says you are +5.0, but you are not a good enough player to find that winning move, then you don't really have an advantage. In order to have an advantage in a position you need to not only be able to have moves that win against your opponent, but be in a position to find and play those moves.

This is what creates subjectivity in chess. The ruy lopez and the center game are equally sound openings, but if I play the ruy lopez I am screwed because I don't play the ruy lopez. I have equality in the position but I am not in a position to actually find the moves that are good.

So that is why it's possible, as you said in your article, for one opening to be good for me and one to be good for you.

I am an insane sacrifice/tactical player. Almost all of my wins are quick wins in 30 moves are less with relentless attacks and down on material. My attitude towards chess is "Victory is achieved by checkmating the enemey king, so why make it any more complicated? Every move I make should be attempting to checkmate the enemy king." I will always learn to be more subtle and positional, but that doesn't change that this is my particular play style.

So when I look at the position that results in my line and I see a fiancetto'd bishop, a bishop vs. knight advantage, some advance pawns and attacking chances I go "wow, I would really like to play this position".

I look at the resulting position for your proposed line and I think "boy, these exactly the kinds of closed positions I usually play bad moves and lose patience in."

But the reason why I think, at least my level, both lines are equally good, is because having good moves to play is not as important as being able to actually find those moves, and in some cases in your continuations, stockfish only evalutes white as winning because stockfish knows how to win as white. An 1800 rated player? Maybe not so much.

But you have very good ideas, and I enjoy your articles. I think that perhaps realizing the idea of having good moves available vs. being able to find them will help you understand how different openings can be equal viable among imperfect humans.

Interesting stuff and opinions thanks :)

I get what you are saying.

However, I learned that line when I was a beginner and I only play it against that 2.Bc4 line's.

The moves I picked on that article are not considered the best Stockfish move's. Don't get me wrong they are stockfish choices. However, I picked those moves becuase they are good moves that are easy for a human to understand. The reason why is becuase I was a beginner.

In that position stockfish likes the best move Nc6;however, its more complex idea. The move I showed is not considered the very best move yet the idea is alot easier to understand.

You like attacking well the line I show does that. It attacks the bishop, it attacks the pawn, and it attacks the knight in most cases. An it fianchetteos a bishop on b7 attacking all the way to were the white king usually castles.

However, It was just an idea I wanted to give out. If you love playing your line go for it.

I just want you to know that I checked your line as well with an engine it seems those moves are engines best move's as well

The after the move 3.Qf3 the move 3...Nf6 is considered to be the second best move recommend by Stockfish and after that move the following moves are considered the best engine moves for both side's.

An the reason why I checked it out is becuase I love adding new lines to the collection with different idea's. Which just goes to show you don't need to be an engine to find good move's some times the easy moves are the good move's.

(Not going to quote all of that...)

I know that is why I am not good with positional chess. I use the engine to play lots of moves I don't understand... that is why I spend 2/3 of my time studying and 1/3 of my time playing. I've decided though that I would rather learn chess by learning what the right moves mean rather than losing with moves I understand. Why? Well a few reasons:

1: As a beginner (1200 standard, 800 blitz) I don't have good ideas anyways. I should stick to copying other people's ideas for now. If I decided to come up with my own ideas, I would open with 2: Qh5 because the best idea I can come up with is scholar's mate.

2: When I play ideas I don't quite understand, or ideas that are much more subtle than what a 1200 player would normally play, I am helping myself think like a GM, and I believe it is never too early to start trying to think like a GM. 

3: Physically playing the moves and attempting to understand them has done heaps for my positional knowledge. Simply putting the right patterns and the right ideas into my head, even if I didn't fully understand them, put me in a position to think like a GM at critical moments in games.

So that is why I try to follow GM and engine moves for the opponents, and spend lots of time trying to figure our the middle game patterns and plans. I think the simplest way to put it is this. When people are at a stuck position in a game (either because the middle game just started and they don't know what to do, or the opponent seems overwhelming) one of the first questions they ask is "what would a GM do?" or "What would an engine do?" If I played all my own moves and study with my own analysis board, I would never have any data to draw from. But now when I ask that, I have hundreds of games and hours of engine analysis to say "This is what I think a GM would do. I remember a similar situation here and here and here and maybe this idea applies." If people don't study master games and only use very minimal engine analysis (after a specific line, I like to let the engine play a complete 3 minute blitz game against itself to see what kind of positions arise. What of the most beautiful things I've seen about chess is that in a given opening, certain moves will pop up over and over no matter what variation the opening is.) they don't have this advantage of raw data and pattern recognition to help them through tough situations.

So I have no idea what the right answer is, but that is the logic behind my madness of why I play moves I don't understand and study so much rather than "play play play" and "tactics tactics tactics".

Very Interesting approach indeed.

Honestly, going over games of grandmasters (including the notes) really has helped my game drastically.  I went from 800 to 1380 in one year but even still my positional game has only really just started to improve more.  I've been studying a lot of Ulf Anderson's games as he was a very patient player focused all on position.  I think even in the last couple weeks of doing this I've improved quite a bit, bringing my rating up 100 points or so, but then I've been this high before and lost it, so don't quite know yet.  My goal is 1500.

Sicilian for e4... interesting. I usually do a Spanish game variation for really any two space movement at the beginning, ending up pinning a knight to its queen with a bishop

I'm sure he will consider this, after he returns from his 3-year hiatus from chess dot com.

Don't read too many books just try to play natural

Well happens all the time, I lose lots of games to that one now a days but I always "win".. 

Great to hear