Should I switch my openings?

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Avatar of pfren
dannyhume έγραψε:
How do you truly learn openings if you can’t calculate 2-3 moves ahead in quiet (not just tactical or forcing) positions or evaluate such a position independent of what books or stronger players tell you?

 

This.

Avatar of A-mateur

Apparently, nobody except @MatthewFreitag understood the nuances: openings can be worth learning by beginners, but they are certainly not the most important thing to learn (who said this?!), and learning an opening at a low-level doesn't mean memorizing the 15 first moves: it means understanding the ideas beyond the very first moves (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6. A beginner who doesn't understand why would white play 3.Bb5 should learn this before adding the Ruy Lopez to his repertoire: the pressure on e5 is the key idea of this opening (I'm not saying it's the only idea)). 


 

Avatar of Capabotvikhine
pfren wrote:

At 904 USCF, openings should be your very last priority.

I second that comment whole heartedly. 

You should focus on TACTICS, TACTICS, and more TACTICS for now. 

Then make sure you at least have all the basic mates down. 

Avatar of MatthewFreitag
pfren wrote:
MatthewFreitag έγραψε:
pfren wrote:
ChessChainlinks1 έγραψε:

@pfren Doesn't mean he won't learn something from them.

 

He/She will learn how to waste his/her time, and that is that.

Even at beginner levels, some opening knowledge is important.

 

Oh boy, here we go again...

repeating myself:

At 904 USCF, openings should be your very last priority.

Yes last priority, but they are still of some importance.

You should have some idea of the moves you are going to play, some grasp of opening fundementals.

Avatar of pfren
MatthewFreitag έγραψε:

 

You should have some idea of the moves you are going to play, some grasp of opening fundementals.

 

Nah... nowhere close.

A friend of mine has reached somewhere at 2000- FIDE.
He knows incredible amounts of theory in the openings he plays (English as white, French and King's Indian as Black).
He always got good to fantastic positions out of the opening, but thsi did not really help due to his poor positional judgement and frequent blundering.
He is not a bad player, but performing poorly for his GM-level openings' knowledge.
He tried to improve his tactical skills, although in an unorthodox way (playing blitz games). Of course this did not help much- whenever we played a match, it was a route, usually he was pleased to scrape one, or one and half points out of twelve games.
Here is a game he played as Black against a late IM, who was notorious for his very poor openings knowledge. Everybody knew that, and was well prepered to play him- yet things were going wrong for them whenever he went out of book (which is: almost always).His secret was exquisite positional understanding and judgement, which led to great results (including a hard-fought draw against the Legend David Bronstein, back in the sixties).

Here is the game (names removed). Black had a great position after the opening, and when white played the oddball 9.a4 early on, Black lost it and managed to turn a great position to a hopelessly lost one with just a couple of silly moves (15...Nf4? and 17...b6?).

 

 
 
 
That is about a player who hardly is a beginner, knows about openings more than a GM, and performs less than a CM. For a beginner, things are much more straightforward: Openings' knowledge will be detrimental to their progress if it is done before basic knowledge on the endgame, and middlegame.
Avatar of MatthewFreitag

You make a very good point. One of my biggest mistakes was wasting time on openings.

Avatar of keep1teasy

I am still wasting time on openings lol

Avatar of dannyhume
I am still wasting time trying to figure out what to play on move 3.
Avatar of x-4100900903

May I suggest the wonderful "Logical Chess, Move by Move" by Chernev. it is an excellent book that goes through every stage of the game( opening, middle-game, endgame) and explains everything move by move. so you will learn a great deal from it. 

it was the first book I studied about chess when I was just starting out about 5 years ago and I am planning to do it again. happy.png