Why Knowing Your Openings is Important at Higher Levels!

Everyone on this site, myself included, harps over why it's not important for a 1200 player to study opening theory, and there is total truth to that.

However, on the flip side, when you reach Expert (2000), you really need to know opening theory because not knowing it will lead to a very miserable game if your opponent knows it, and here, White suffers a horrible defeat in what turns out to be a miniature!

It sounds to me like paragraph #1 together with paragraph #2 imply that beginners *should* start learning openings since they know they're eventually going to need to do so, and there is so much to learn that they should start right away. That has been my belief all along.

Anyway, that was an impressive game, worth saving, in my opinion, especially since it makes me more wary of the power of the Modern Defense.

Very interesting game, thanks for posting it

Sqod,

The point is that at the lower level, there is no need to know opening theory.  Even if you know the Najdorf 25 moves deep, it won't do you any good because White will deviate long before it gets to move 25 as he will have no understanding, and with everyone constantly going out of book, you need to know what to do based off their deviation.  White here went out of book on move 6, and following his 8th move, Black's plan is easy - IF you understand the nuances of the position.  Not "memorize" the Modern Defense, but actually understand it.  Your opponent will not make the constant mistakes that an opposing 1200 player will make.

So the important thing for 1200 players is not to focus on the deep theory that actually is necessary at 2000, but also don't just brush the opening totally aside, and focus on "Opening Concepts".  Control the Center, don't move the Queen early, connect the Rooks, Knights before Bishops in "most" cases, etc.

At 1200, it is critical not to play moves like ...h6 or ...a6 just to prevent a move that is not even a threat.  Not all pins are bad.  Understand whether Bb5 is an actual issue before you push ...a6.  White does White in a given position develop the Knight to e2 instead of f3, or d2 instead of c3?  Notice I'm not totally ignoring the opening, but I'm also not focused on Dragon theory.

You start studying specific openings around 1700 to 1800, and hopefully by the time you are 2000, you actually understand the opening you are playing.  Regurgitating 23 moves of an opening and not being able to explain each move, and the moment that someone asks you why move 14 is so critical, if you can't answer it, you don't actually understand the opening, you are memorizing and parrotting.

It's just like pre-meditating where a piece will go.  I can't remember the last time that he's play White and hasn't played Bb2 at some point in the game except when facing a Nimzo-Indian.  Making a move out of habit instead of understanding.  In the game above, b3 was a major problem!  All his moves diverted every piece away from a3.

That's part of "Understanding" the Modern and not "Memorizing" the Modern!  Sometimes you can associate ideas from other openings.  Like here, the ...a5 push, the ...c5 outpost for the Knight, and the failed b3/a3/b4 attempt by White, are all common ideas in two other openings.  The Old Indian Defense, which is similar to the KID and Modern except the Bishop is on e7 instead of g7, and the Petrosian King's Indian (5.Nf3 O-O 6.Be2 e5 7.d5), and realizing White's poor coordination of pieces.  It was not about memorizing 20 moves of the Modern Defense!

Same thing goes for other openings.  The French and Caro-Kann often have similar traits to them, as do other sets of opening pairs or trios!

sorry but 2000 is too early to have good opening knowledge. theres still too much game knowledge that you are lacking.

good game though by you, not by your opponent obviously. seems better than 2000 playing strength tbh.

Or, alternatively, you could be an expert who doesn't know much opening theory and doesn't play main-line openings, or even anything that could transpose to them. Doesn't make any difference.

Knowing theory can also give easy points. Here I play against somebody rated 200 elopoints less than me in a rated tournament:

I have played 2 games of such quality, and they are tremendously boring. I have also lost one game by such preparation. 

This is a good game, but you were maybe a bit blunt towards the opponent in your annotations IMO...do your opponents ever read your blogs? Hopefully they aren't offended, haha.

Who is Patrick?

the op

I don't understand whites play at all. That was horrible, even if he didn't know the opening. The big clue was locking in his light bishop, and then never even moving it to even try to help his queenside. I don't know that opening, I have heard of and vaguely remember even that about it.

Yes it is instructive, and thanks for posting it. I would think someone at that level would have played it better, I guess anyone could have a bad day.

I also guess that he was trying to control all the light squares too, and I am also surprised black didn't punish him sooner for it. By Ba6 sooner, even if he didn't need to as you said. And the c5 knight was a big bone in whites throat. White should have recaptured the d5 pawn with his knight on move 13, yeah black might have traded, but so what, white had to do something other than sit there.

It was like white wasn't even trying to defend, and he missed the easy double attack on his Bishop, better would have been to have just moved his bishop to c3 instead of taking the pawn. If the knight moved to attack the rook then Ra2. It was ugly though by then. I think he was flustered, and really just wasn't concentrating at that point.

Was that a blitz game Thriller, or normal time ?

So, he loses a piece due to bad calculation at move 19, and its because he didn't know opening?  I don't know if players at any level learn opening theory till move 20.  This has nothing to do with opening knowledge. White lost in the middle-game.

Any opening has basic concepts and ideas that give you a general direction for the middle game. He did not understand the opening, that is the main reason white lost.

Game in 75 minutes with a 15 second increment per move.  Blitz would be too fast to record moves.

No, the final tactic was not due to the opening.  Notice on move 17 I note "A blunder in a bad position".

The opening errors were 6.g3, 7.Bg2, and 8.Qe2, leading to Black's massive queenside attack.  It parallyzed White's defense due to the abandoning of the Light squares by the Bishop and the a1-Rook and b3-pawn by the Queen.

Black's attack came due to poor opening play.  Black's win of the piece came due to a late game blunder.  Don't try to mesh the two together.  The point of the post is that by move 14, White position is already horrendous, and it's all due to his opening play.  The last 5 moves of the game are merely for completeness since the game was so short anyway.

Good example by the OP of players with the white pieces being clueless when in comes to the Modern Defense, and insisting on playing "faux aggressively" long after they shouldn't.

A number of years back, I played the the Modern Defense (from both sides) in a 5 round Game in 30 tournament.  Against 4 Experts and one NM, I scored 2 wins, 2 draws, and lost to the NM.  I was rated about 1800 at the time.  They didn't know "that opening," didn't know me at that club, and the implicit time pressure of Game in 30 helped me a lot too.

On balance, the "best opening" is one you "know better than your opponent."  Very simple.

And if you want to drown yourself in "Opening Theory," play the Ruy, Sicilian, KID, or a host of other gigantic-theory-openings.  Your choice, as always.

Ashvapathi wrote:

So, he loses a piece due to bad calculation at move 19, and its because he didn't know opening?  I don't know if players at any level learn opening theory till move 20.  This has nothing to do with opening knowledge. White lost in the middle-game.

I agree. The losses were more of a result of overlooking a two-mover. If you can't see a forcing two-mover coming when you have to think on your feet, memorizing opening sequences is not your biggest problem.

Read post 21 - I'm going to tell you the same thing I told him.

The purpose of the thread was moves 1 thru 14, which White has a rotten position due to complete lack of opening knowledge.

Moves 17 thru 19 were the result of a blunder in a position that was already lost due to poor opening play.  The fact that it ended so abruptly wasn't due to lack of opening theory, but even after a different move than 17.a3??, Black is already winning, just it would have taken far more than 3 moves to do if White didn't make a stupid move.

The title and point of the thread is correct.  You are clearly not getting the point of it as you are emphasizing the final tactic in the game, which is by no means the point of it.  The point is that White is lost even after Black's 16th move!  Why is it lost for him at that point?  Because he was clueless about the opening!  Black's ideas and execution from moves 8 to 14 are the main demonstration of what to do when your opponent is clueless about the opening.  The rest after that is simply game completeness.

Focus on moves 8 to 14, not 17 to 19, and you'll get the whole point of the post!  Moves 15 and 16 just show how to continue the execution, and 17-onward is merely a blunder unrelated to the opening.

To be fair, at your level I'd expect you'd probably be able to remember all the games in a blitz tournament. I think I could probably do that with a fair degree of accuracy in move orders and specifics, and I'm 1800