The Sniper is an Opening I want to Learn

I think you really need to read my new book :-)

I live in china, bad internet.

and i'm not a FM 

I'm always envious of people who are still capable of ranting against things whilst ignoring whatever it is they're ranting against. Oh, that blissful simplicity, that narrow-minded omniscience! I really long for those days again...

Writing an opening-book demands planning, research, widening your scope, narrowing your scope down, assess, reassess, receive and process feedback, diving into and emerging stronger from moments of self-doubt, arranging and rearranging your research-material, paying careful attention to all facets of the lay-out, developing a quick way with words and using language in a different way than I am currently doing in this paragraph (short sentences, active and engaging vocabulary, an occasional joke), and being prepared to get a shitload of criticism by self-appointed authorities on the matter.

So much for the pains of writing a book. Let's continue with feedback.

I'm yet to be informed about the first case of burning-down criticism having had a constructive impact on the lives of either the sender or the receiver of such criticism. It creates antagonism and a reluctance to listen or change. It takes an effort, but the results are more than worth it.

And make sure that you're actually saying something concretely. Moving air and meaningless letters around is such an exhausted practice ;)

Here's the perfect "Anti-Sniper" weapon for Blitz.

Not saying this is the bust of the system, or that I even condone it in regular over the board tournament play, but for 5-minute, it's ideal because Black never gets the type of play he wants, and usually is baffled when White actually is crazy enough to try to grab and hold the pawn.  But in blitz, it's effective and works.  In standard play, equality should be easier for Black to achieve than in main lines of the Sniper:

https://live.chess.com/live?v=2016042701#g=1586577520

if not that familiar with the sniper.

if i play like this as white how would the sniper go? 

3...c5 - The Sniper is basically 1...g6, 2...Bg7, and 3...c5, against ANYTHING!

<IM Pfren> 

The game you posted does show a stronger player slowly and carefully outplaying one not that strong. It didn't seem to refute the opening as such. 

The rating difference between the players was 200 points - and it showed. 

Black looked active and seemed to dictate the tone of the game - until white proved that the little pawn on a2 was not so modest after all - tipping the scale decisively in his favor. 

It's obvious that prior to that point the game could have gone a million different ways. Basically the idea of giving a pawn (and the DSB for a knight) and then tripling the pawns on the c-file and pressuring them doesn't seem so absurd. 

My abilities of analysing opening play certainly don't approach yours - but this is the way it looks to a reasonably strong amateur here. 

but that transposes to a mainline kings indian defence. is there a point to play the sniper if you in addition is forced to learn the mainline kings indian? sounds unpractical to me i would rather just learn the kings indian defence

The ratings are not really indicative. The first is a correspondence (ICCF) one, the second is OTB. Besides that, both sides are using correspondence aids (databases, engines etc), so again it's not the rating that matters, but rather the actual position. White is a correspondence Senior Master, and Black an OTB FIDE Master.

And yes... Black "dictated the tone of the game": He gave up a pawn early on (a tripled extra pawn is still an extra pawn), and, most important, he voluntarily riddled himself with serious dark-squared liabilities with ...Bxc3. Feel free to like Black's position, but I'm afraid you are (almost) alone...

Where's that game?

# 32

Thanks. I think I'll probably remain stuck in the Ruy López.

<IM Pfren> Thanks for the explanation, and for pointing out the exact nature of the game and of the ratings. This does make a difference, of course. 

I remember creating such a tripled (and extra) pawn in my own position in a French defense I played last year against an opponent rated 100 points higher (around FIDE 2070). That was a brilliant win indeed - the tripled pawn was used to completely cripple his position...

By the way - he finished the tournament first, with 6 out of 7 and a 2200+ performance - and in our club he's quite the expert for the French defense, in which I clubbed him. 

Unfortunately I no longer have that game (my hard disc crashed in December and lots of stuff were lost), and I also didn't post it on chess.com, so I can't post it here. The structure resulted from a Winawer with ...Bxc3 and later dxc5 by white. He suffered for the whole game after that. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I don't know if I liked black's position, say, around move 15 or 20 in the game in #32. I just say that to my eyes it wasn't quite that clear-cut

In the Winawer, there's an exception to the rule that doubled and even tripled pawns are positioally bad, but that is due to the unique situation there. Even so, as Kasparov once said after his match with Short where Short routinely voluntarily messed up his own pawns, structure still matters.

There are also players who claim that there are in fact no openings. Just middle-game positions with distinctive pawn-structures. Personally I am inclined to agree with them to the degree that a productive study of the opening starts with a thorough understanding of the kinds of positions that arise after the mundane opening-moves have been played out. In fact I believe this is critical: if you don't know where to go after your preparation, you may find yourself lost in a quagmire of positional features and don't know how to deal with them.

King's Indian, Grunfeld-Indian, Benoni, Benko, Philidor, Pirc, Sicilian ((Hyper-)Accelerated) Dragon, Maroczy-Bind, some lines of the Closed Sicilian/Grand Prix, Panov-Botwinnik (yip, basically anything with a bishop on g7 and Black attacking the d4-square with c7-c5) can be reached through the Sniper-setup. This means a few things:

- By using the Sniper's move-order, you can put the question to White's preparation, and you have a few neat little tricks up your sleeve to crash the uninformed and inattentive White-players out from the start;
- The Sniper is not a "whole new opening", as you might be inclined to think at first hand. It's a way to transpose into these other openings, meaning you'd have to study the typical middle-game positions anyway. You just have a less-known quagmire of deceitful variations at your own disposal as well.

For studying any opening, I suggest to first set up the tabias of these openings and then remove all the pieces from the board in order to imprint the position's fundaments in your head. You get a much clearer idea of the fundamental central pawn-levers and breakthrough opportunities for both sides, and you can also see much clearer where you eventually want to have your pieces.
Only then you go back to the opening-lines to see how to get there, and along the way you learn all the tricks and pitfalls of the opening. And you'll understand the different development-moves much better. (Why would White put the king's knight on e2 in most variations of the Frensch Tarrasch and not on its more natural square f3? Because, apart from the fact that Ne2-f4 can be annoying for Black, very often the knights are supposed to be on f3 and e2 to fortify the d-pawn, not on f3 and d2. The knight on d2 is supposed to go to f3.)

<SmyslovFan> I suppose that that exception is because the black position is pretty cramped, and especially that c5 pawn is instrumental (in many variations) in keeping the b7 pawn back, so that you generate pressure along the b-file. 

This always requires calculation, to make sure that black doesn't suddenly break free and blow the position wild open. That game that I no longer have a record of, was a great example of what I'm writing here. 

I have not yet begun to study openings in depth (I don't think I am ready, yet), but I have made myself familiar with a good number of them. And I have never heard of "The Sniper" opening. And quite honestly, it sounds like something I would more likely hear from local "chess hustlers" playing blitz than from the more serious, higher level players.

There was some statistics done, and in terms of ratings being good predictors of OTB strength, the best predictor was blitz, the second best was bullet, and the worst was correspondence chess. I don't have the link at my fingertips, but you could look it up somewhere on this site.