USCF OTB: How Booked Up are Players from 1400-1799? 1800-2100?

Reason for the Question:  I "retired" from OTB about 30 years ago with a 1762 USCF OTB rating.  I am planning to return to OTB play, possibly the latter half of this year.  Obviously, I am way over-rated.  I don't even know how I got to 1762 since I never studied openings.  (Lines after lines of Figurine Algebraic Notation just make me want to throw up.)

Now that I've "re-discovered" chess at an age where Garry Kasparov and Yasser Seirawan have retired (my age co-horts), and yet I want to play! again, I'm wondering how Booked up today's players are.  

For the USCF commenters who still play rated OTB events, how booked up are players in the 1400-1799 range?  From 1800-2100 range?  I know I'm gonna drop rating points knocking the rust off, but I don't want to hemorrhage them like a bleeding trauma victim either.

I know there's a range, but I'm wondering if there's a large majority of players who are booked up.  I suppose I should define what this patzer means by "Booked Up."  A Booked Up player is someone who has is repertoire down to where he knows the first 6-10 moves of his opening and knows the ideas and themes of his opening choices.

I am at a distinct disadvantage to these booked up players when all I try to do is to try and reach a playable middle game.

Speaking as a player that has fluctuated between 2050 and 2150 for the past few years, I can tell you that I am pretty booked up.

In theoretical openings like the King's Indian Defense, Mar Del Plata variation, I could play, assuming White doesn't deviate and cause me to spend time to think about the issue with White's move given various King's Indian concepts, roughly 15 moves in under a minute.  Now, of course, a GM that plays the main line Mar Del Plata will probably know it 30 moves deep instead of that of an expert who knows 15 moves.

I can play various lines of the French 10 to 15 moves deep without thought, especially the MacCutcheon.

Another difference between a 1700, 2100, and GM is a 1700 may be booked up for one opening.  Say, the King's Gambit.  If you play c5 or e6 on move 1, they are merely guessing what to do, and you can tell from their play.  A 2100 player may be booked up in certain openings or certain variations of certain openings, like a know one player that can play 20+ moves of King's Indian Mar Del Plata with no sweat, but you play a Saemisch and he goes in the tank in terms of time.  Then, at the GM level, they know almost every opening, and surely every main stream opening, pretty much inside and out.

So, for example, if you were to face me, you'd probably be in major trouble if it was a King's Indian or French, myself being either color.  If you are White, your best bet against me is go for something like an English Opening.  If you are Black, and you play a French, look out.  But if you play 1...e5, you've got pretty good chances against me, and hence why I am an expert and not a GM.  Mastering just the French and King's Indian is not enough to master the game of chess!

This is one of the two points I was going to respond with. As an ~1700 player there are some openings I can confidently pound out 15 moves in, others where I would be out of prep after only 3 or 4 (to use extreme examples). In the Najdorf, for example, only studying a dozen moves in seems irresponsible. Not to mention, the "starting" position is already 6 or 7 moves in. Against a London setup even going to 5 or 6 seems excessive to me - I just try to play with common sense. The other factor here is the frequency with which I see something - in my last 20 tournament games with white I have probably played 13 or 14 Sicilians, whereas the last time somebody played the Alekhine defense against me was probably five years ago. So it's not practical to afford them anywhere near equal study time.

Also it largely depends on the player. Some people seem able to achieve/hold an 1800 rating purely by making reasonable positional moves and never blundering, and don't seem to follow main lines for more than the first 5 or 6 moves. Others can blitz out lots of home prep against me in the early game but seem to have weak positional understanding, or drop a pawn when I take them out of their comfort zone.

Really I think it's hard to make generalizations about players in the 1500-2000 rating range, except to say that they must have some gaps somewhere in their play. Whether their opening prep is the thing holding them back or the thing propping them up varies.

A 1400-1600 rated player who is not improving probably isn't very booked up. I was ~1400 OTB without study and wasn't improving and studied some openings and managed to beat many players 1600-1900 and my rating shot up above 1700 even though I would fail at simple endgames, so the higher the rating the more booked up or better understanding they will have, yet if they are very strong in 1 area they are probably weak in another

ThrillerFan:  "Speaking as a player that has fluctuated between 2050 and 2150 for the past few years, I can tell you that I am pretty booked up."

Curious.  In your last 3 OTB tournaments, would you say that the majority of your opponents were booked up too?  (I assume that you play in Under 2200 sections or the Open Section of an Open).

Khalayx:  "Really I think it's hard to make generalizations about players in the 1500-2000 rating range,..."

Your personal anecdotal is more than sufficient.   In your last 3 OTB tournaments would you say that a large majority of your opponents were booked up? 

Daniel,

Too much emphasis is put on being "booked up" on openings.  What happens when you're out of book quickly? Being "booked up" at our level became the big thing with the popularity of the MacDonald's of chess, Blitz, and quicker time controls in Classical.  You have to make up time somewhere through "automatic" play.

Board vision, visualization, tactical awareness and endgame acuity is more important at our level, and if truth be told at every level unless you are dealing with forced sequences where one mistake means disaster such as in the Najdorf.  Besides, the player who makes the last mistake -- typically an oversight -- is commonly the loser, so spending time on Heisman's "checks, captures and threats, in that order" and tactics is always a plus.

Generally, being able to calculate accurately and evaluate concretely in analytical positions and examine the position abstractly in non-analytical positions is the key to improvement. Both of these are covered in the e-mail I recently sent you on Dan Heisman's books.

If you want an informed answer that is more to the point than players wrapped up in their own limited experiences with "booking up," ask Dan Heisman by sending an email to danheisman@comcast.net.

Best,
Bob

I've written two lengthy responses and then deleted both. I really think it varies a lot from game to game.

That said, if you look at the picture of any opening's "starting position" in an opening book, I would say that most of my opponents take things out of the well-traveled lines within only a few moves after reaching the main position.

EDIT: Of course, whether this means they're out of book or have reached their favorite pet sideline is not always clear.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/my-first-chess-tournament

The above link was both humorous and insightful.   My situation is not the same, but somewhat analogous in that I'm concerned or nervous or worried.  

My speculation (and I'm open to refutation based on limited and personal anecdotal evidence) is that about 60 to 85% of players rated from 1400-1799 are "booked up" today.  And I'll speculate that 1800-2200's are 97% "booked up."  Of course, "booked up" is somewhat relative.  

On a prior Chess.com thread there was a raging and healthy debate on what's best for beginners and intermediates:  Predominant emphasis on tactics OR predominant emphasis on Openings.  There were some misunderstandings on both sides of this debate.  The Advocates of Tactics were thinking that the Openings People were saying to study Openings to the near exclusion of Tactics, while the Openings People were thinking that the Tactics Advocates were saying to study Tactics at the near exclusion of Openings.

Now, at the beginning of this debate I was in the Tactics camp.  But now, I'm thinking that I gotta spend some time on Openings (which would delay my OTB return).  I just don't want to get killed in position and clock trying to get to a playable middlegame while my opponent has only expended 1-5 minutes on his clock while knowing all the opening traps from his carefully chosen opening repertoire.  I'd be sunk in those G/60, and especially in those G/30 time formats.

---------

Fighting Bob, I hate to bother such an esteemed author and coach as Dan Heisman, but if you really think he'll take the time to respond to pseudonymous on-line old patzer's worries about not being sufficiently booked up in the internet age of chess, I'll do it and ask him for his thoughts.

I continue to find myself drawn to this thread, possibly because I've returned to the game after a few multi-year absences myself (and realistically, know I probably will again in the future some day). Work and life get in the way of us mortals sometimes and that's to be expected.

Although I've never had anything resembling a 30 year break, based on even 3-4 year "non-competitive" times, yes, you probably need to prioritize getting your openings back up to speed. Certainly I can say that scraping the rust off of my repertoire has proven to make the difference of one or two hundred performance points. That said - I would not delay making your OTB return, as you suggest doing above. Probably no matter how much preparation you do, if you're coming back after a long break, your rating will dip after your first couple of matchups. That's to be expected and, in the long run, not really a problem. Plus to my way of thinking, your goal is really just to play some good chess right? Don't put that off just because you're worried about meeting a bar you set some years ago. Get back into the action as soon as possible and see where the bar is today.

As far as your openings vs tactics debate - the bare minimum is to not outright lose your game due to either. So long as you aren't hanging pawns, or winding up with a severe positional disadvantage on move 8, where you choose to spend your time after that might not be as critical as either of these "camps" suggest.

I can't help but think of the last round player I faced a couple months ago - he struck me in no uncertain terms as a positional player, and I doubted very much that he cared much for tactics or opening theory. (He was also very elderly, and at the risk of stereotyping, this seems to be common of relatively strong players past a certain age). But at the same time, I could tell that he was not going to blunder any material, and the opening he played, although not critical, led us to a perfectly playable middlegame for both sides. In my usual long-winded fashion, what I'm trying to say is: maybe don't worry so much about what your opponents are going to be experts in - just fill in whatever big gaps your long-term absence has left in your game, and then focus on the chess you want to play.

Fears validated!!    Lol!

More important than book strength, I think the majority of players are stronger tactically than they were 30 years ago. This is due to easier access to resources and better training resources, that have come with the advent of the internet.

As far as being booked up, it doesn't really depend on level so much, but I think it actually starts being helpful and people start better understanding the middlegame plans out of the opening at around 1800.

That's what I'm thinking.  Sigh.

I mean, C'mon, there's a helluva lot more resources than there were 30 years ago!  Off the top of my head:  Lots of great books on Amazon, Ebay, and Kindle; chess engines like Stockfish, Fritz, Houdini, etc.; Chess databases like Chessbase; free chess videos on YouTube; chess coaches everywhere like mini me Pandolfinis; chess websites like chess.com, and so on.

It's a technological information big bang explosion.  Class players have to have improved!

Dinosaurs have to learn nanotechnology, else risk becoming Smithsonian fossils who reminisce longingly for the old days of  Descriptive Notation and game adjournments.

Hi ThrillerFan, this is a minor question, but I'm still curious:  When you're banging booked-up moves by memory in your OTB play, say the first 15 moves in a minute or so, does that include the time it takes to write down your opponent's moves and your moves too?

I'm trying to get a picture of it in my mind.  Bang a move, hit the clock, write down the move... bam, bam, bam!  I think it's pretty good way to save time for the harder positions.

Or do you write moves when things slow down, and thus, catch up later with all the missed moves?

Hi Daniel,

Since I've written to Mr. Heisman before I don't see why you can't.  I told him how much I enjoyed his Novice Nook column at ChessCafe when it was a non-paying site, and also that I'd be reviewing his books favorably at Amazon, which he appreciated.  Obviously, if you want lessons from him you're going to have to pay, but he's willing to answer question and probably point you to what he and others have written on the subject.

That said, you may want to read these articles by Mr. Heisman to get acquainted with his insights and recommendations regarding the opening phase of the game.

• Learning Opening Lines & Ideas
• Opening Principles
• How to Use MCO-14 (or now, MCO 15)
• Openings vs. Opening Systems

I hope this helps.

Best,
Bob 

I'm 1244 FIDE, and I ' m pretty booked up that my Grunfeld repertoire with black is at least 10 moves in the sidelines, 15-20 to 30 moves in main lines. everyone can be booked up.

Not to be insulting, but you shouldn't be messing with the complicated and subtle Grünfeld Defense at your level of development.  Who put you onto that opening?

Most instructors tell neophytes to play the open game (i.e. e4) first before moving to the closed game (i.e. d4).

I'm underrated. 1450-1500 national rating.

Also play chess seriously.

If you want to play more popular openings against 1400-2000s they will probably be more booked up not because they took the time to memorize lines, but because they have been playing an opening like the ruy lopez for years

After a 17 year layoff (1998-2015), I started playing OTB again.  One thing I noticed was that my openings were not good enough to compete against almost anyone over 1800.  It seems everyone was booked up well past anything I was playing.  However, I still did OK.  Openings to me are just a starting point to get a playable middle game.  It did not seem to me that players today are stronger tactically.  I made comebacks in numerous games by my tactical play, even against some masters.  That being said, I am working on openings now so that I can do better.