An IM told me I shouldn't play the Catalan unless you are 2300

I was at a chess lecture a few months ago with IM Donaldson.  I really enjoyed his insights and his stories on working with the US Olympiad team.  Well, sometime during that lecture he mentioned the Catalan, one of my fav openings as white!  And he basically said.. the Catalan is a very complex opening and unless you are 2300 you should not play it.  

I was like... oh...   

And I really did consider trashing it.  Although learning a whole new opening can be an ordeal ya know?  

But then I looked at my score with it, and I score fairly well with it.. and my thought was...  well, maybe the opening is way too complex for me to understand at a high level, but why do I need to play it correctly?  My opponants are 1400-1600 like me... Don't I just need to know it and understand it better than them?

And so I've stuck with it.  My chess coach is about 1900 and he plays it as well.  He doesn't seem to think its too complex... so that being said, it gives me positions i'm comfortable with and I'm still playing it.

But dismissing the advice of an IM doesn't sit right with me either.   

I've also heard IM John Bartholomew say similar things about the Nimzo Indian.  He basically says if you are a lower rated player you shouldn't play it.  I understand these lines are complex, have many pawn structures to learn, and might be too hard for a lower rated player to really understand.. but again, do you really need to?  Don't you just need to know it better than your opponant?  And even if you don't, don't you need to play it in order to get better?  

I dunno, I'm wondering how others feel about this, esp you stronger players!  (and esp if you play the Catalan).  I'm still willing to give it up if that's really the right thing, but I want to be really sure.

Thanks in advance.  -Stacia

 I think that is BS and probably it is just the IM who have an issue or some bad experiences himself with this opening. If you enjoy that opening there should be no reason not to play it. And if you should get the change to play that IM one day you know know what opening to use against him

haha I'd probably just give him the chance to prove his point lol

He does't want you coming at him with a good opening.

If you want to hone your positional skills, play things like the Catalan or English or Reti. Whatever you play, you learn something.

But you got to play something.

Jennifer Yu had a very nice game yesterday in the Girls world championship with the Catalan alhtough I htink it transposed into some kind of Kings Indian. I loved the move 18.f3 which looks strange as it blocks the light squared bishop but as far as i can tell it has a deeply prepared tactical basis that was not actually played in the game.

Catalan is probably fine if both players are out of the book after 5 to 7 moves

For me it is a matter of taste. If you think you have fun with an opening, just play it. Some openings are really hard to play if you are not very well prepared before even trying it. I had this impression for example with Grünfeld as black and the Portuguese Gambit, also with black.  

'haha this has nothing to do with Catalan since move 1' - greekgift_221b

The Catalan is a chess opening where White adopts a combination of the Queen's Gambit and Réti Opening: White plays d4 and c4 and fianchettoes the white bishop on g2;

Perhaps you have your own definition of the Catalan? One that is not entirely known to the rest of the chess world?

If you have big improvement goals, then definitely take advice from titled players (especially if you're hearing it from more than one source).

But if you're happy with your current level, and just play tournaments for fun, then just pay attention to your results. Just like no one can imagine much beyond 400 rating points above them, people can't really imagine 400 points below themselves either. An IM will not understand how black (or white) handles the Catalan at your rating...

like, even if they see the games, they will not understand, because they are blinded by "correct" evaluations and plans that are unknown to both low rated players

Also, in general, distrust anyone who says 50 to 100 points below me is [some benchmark].

Usually the benchmark they mention is "can be reached by tactics alone, without positional understanding."

So while the Catalan may be complex, if he says you only start to understand when you're 100 points below him... that's a big warning sign for BS.

Remember Kasparov's first match with Karpov. Kasparov was already a leading player in the world, but was getting beaten up in the Sicilian. It took one of the best players of all time YEARS of super GM play to improve his Najdorf, so if you want to talk about complex... yet just about everyone plays the Najdorf, and no one says to wait until 2700.

So as someone who would like to acquire deep positional knowledge as I learn, does it makes sense to keep with it?  I mean, I know I will play it wrong but my thing is I'm not facing GM's    So if i know slightly more than my adversaries I should be ok and hopefully learn in the process?  

If there is a flaw in this logic please let me know.  If ditching the opening is the right thing then I will surely consider it.  I wish to improve as a chess player.  Thanks for your comments!  Always helpful.

haha good point!  Well, I do wish to improve very much so I'm inclined to take advice from IM's.  Maybe I don't know enough to know why I have to ditch this opening.  lol  I guess next step is figuring out what to play instead.. another hard question.  lol

pfren is always great, I hope he answers your questions because we can all learn something.

But it is true that classical openings (following classical principals) are not only easier to understand, but foundational. It's like asking if trying to run is a good way to learn how to walk...  it's not. Walk first, run later

That's a great point, sammy_boi.  Maybe I should just play a simpler opening with the idea that there is plenty of basic positional stuff I don't know within those openings anyway.  Once I've mastered that (and get to 2300...lol) I could revisit the Catalan with new eyes.

@ Midnas Lament

The problem when deciding an opening choice, especially for intermediate players like you is that you don't pay attention to understand completely the ideas and plans getting involved. That has, as a result, to spend a lot of time playing something when at some point you realize that doesn't suit your current ability to play chess....and then comes the disappointment.

First of all, you didn't explain to us, what is your level of understanding the Catalan!? Did you read some theoretical books? Do you try to reach some certain positions? and if so which of them?

I am asking all that because by definition playing the Catalan requires being familiar with some ideas, either Black opens dxc4 or keep it close.

For example, the main positional goal of Whites in the open variation is to play against the c8 Bishop even if that requires to play with two pawns down! Are you ready to understand that now? Probably not but the problem is that you will continue to play a " bad habits " chess and when you will face someone stronger you will not know what to do!!

Someone who wants to improve in chess has to seek and play with stronger players when the necessity to know the opening ideas becomes much more critical. In conclusion, your statement " from the moment my opponents don't understand my positional mistakes why should not play it? " doesn't match with your ambition to become better at chess.

P.S : My personal experience with the Catalan showed to me that i am not ready to play the opening. I have no clue whats going on! even if i spent hours reading books, watching video Lectures, having games experience. At the end ...the more i was getting familiar with the theory, the more i wanted to walk away.

You can play any opening at any level. As your playing strength rises, you'll naturally start to discover new ideas and resources in your openings of choice.

So, say, if a 1600 started playing the Catalan, and kept playing all the way till they reached 2300—well, then they've done just fine. They'll also have made many tweaks and adjustments to their Catalan play along the way.

I know a player who started with the French Defense when he was, according to him, 1100. He's now a National Master. He didn't wait until he was titled before learning the French—he just stuck with it religiously and improved his handling of it through the years.

It is a little bit like solving jigsaw puzzles, if you have trouble solving 12x12 but prefer solving 24x24 because you can solve them anyway but takes a longer time, then you miss the lessons from solving 16x16, 20x20 that would aid you in solving 24x24 in lesser time and more methodical way. However, we are not playing against computers, but against fellow human beings who have limited understanding just as well. I guess it all depends on our ambitions. 

              The almost proverbial advice that I constantly hear about is " to start playing open systems first before playing the closed systems" has a lot of wisdom in it, but is constantly not heeded by players wanting to improve.

Chess gets stale playing similar openings.  More importantly,  the knowledge you obtain in one opening can likely improve your understanding of other openings.  So I do not believe you should not play an opening because some think its too complicated.  You will learn that through experience and much more along your chess journey.  I say play it and learn, and have fun!   Free thought is a requirement in chess. 

IM Donaldson is certainly right that the Catalan is extremely complex, both strategically and tactically. 

I have studied the Catalan in some detail, and it is a morass of positions that look similar to each other but that have completely different evaluations and appropriate plans. Even the world's best have gone astray playing the Catalan. Which is why the world's best play it! It's complex enough to defeat even the best players, from either side.

I agree with IM Donaldson if he is only talking about OTB chess. In correspondence chess, you can lead the unwary player into the thickets and survive. Correspondence chess is a dying art, but the Catalan can still be used by correspondence players to good effect even though White's advantage is often miniscule in cc play.

EVERY opening is potentially very complex, so my guess is that Donaldson isn't saying you can't win most of your games with the Catalan or Nimzo-Indian, but that he thinks you would win a higher percentage with different openings.

When I was coaching a high school club and team, who often saw 1 e4 e5 in tournaments, I considered getting them hooked on the King's Gambit as White, but thought that the complexity and the lack of clear middlegame plans didn't fit players in the 700-1400 OTB range.

So I taught them the Bishop's Opening, which often transposes to a favorable position for White in the King's Gambit Declined and often develops with clear middlegame plans like get in an early f4, then O-O-O, then Pawn Storm Black's O-O King.  At the time (1990's), that Opening had been out of favor for 60 years, there were few books about it, and our opponents didn't know it. We rode it all the way the three straight county championships in our state's most competitive county and 3rd-4th-5th state championship trophies in those years.  If we had tried to bite-off openings and strategies that were above the players heads, we would never have achieved that.

That doesn't mean Donaldson is right.  If you play any opening long enough, you gain much more understanding of what it can do than almost all your opponents.