Well it was mostly people I have played against here... I lose and then they will say something in the chat like "study more openings."
I looked over your five most recent games. You made it through the opening phase fine in all of them.
Well it was mostly people I have played against here... I lose and then they will say something in the chat like "study more openings."
I looked over your five most recent games. You made it through the opening phase fine in all of them.
My five most recent games were all against my friend who is same skilled as me. The people I was referring to are from about 6 to 7 months ago, and they were 20-minute timed games.
This morning I'm looking through a few lines in John Shaw's excellent book on the King's Gambit. I accidentally played 1...e5 while fixing dinner last night and won a wild King's Gambit against a strong opponent. After our moves 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Nc6 3.Nf3 exf4 4.Bc4 g5, Shaw points out that my opponent's 5.h4 is an error.
Studying openings is fun and productive, but it plays third fiddle to endgames and tactics.
Studying openings is an EXCELLENT way to improve your chess, at any level.
The key, however, is that most a lot chess players don't understand what truly studying openings CORRECTLY is, and thus erroneously conclude it doesn't help their game.
Studying openings doesn't mean just memorizing 1,3, or even 10 of the main and common sidelines in a choice system. That's just memorizing moves, and is barely scratching the surface of studying an opening.
Going through a lot of opening games by strong players, playing a lot of games in the opening system, REVIEWING your opening errors in that system, and reinforcing your opening mistakes by studying tactics + positional concepts that will improve your play in that system - THAT is correct opening system study, and improves all facets of your game.
I had a significant and permanent jump in my rating when I decided to actually buckle down and study the London system as white and the French defense as black. The london system is a nice example forcing more 'correct' opening study, as there are no slam-dunk winning lines for white - you learn to make solid developing moves, and correctly generate a good middlegame attack. You play the London by experience/feel much, much more than specific memorized lines (you do end up memorizing a fair amount, though.)
It's a lot of work, and has huge overlap with middlegame study and tactics, but that's why it's good stuff, and it'll affect not just your play in that opening, but all similar positions.
Even memorizing all the lines in Fundamental Chess Openings by Van Der Sterren is BARELY scratching the surface of learning an opening. Like <2%. You're better off buying a specific book on a specific opening if you want enough knowledge to actually play an opening. That FCO is a lot more useful for a strong player that is solid on opening principles and just needs a nudge reminder of the best theoretical moves, but can figure out the rest on their own OTB.
I had a significant and permanent jump in my rating when I decided to actually buckle down and study the London system as white and the French defense as black. The london system is a nice example forcing more 'correct' opening study, as there are no slam-dunk winning lines for white - you learn to make solid developing moves, and correctly generate a good middlegame attack. You play the London by experience/feel much, much more than specific memorized lines (you do end up memorizing a fair amount, though.)
I've been thinking of adding the London System to my repertoire. How do you feel about it now that you've been playing it?
I highly recommend the London system as a d4 opening as white. It's by far my favorite opening now.
The main reasons I think it's so great:
- Teaches you to study openings CORRECTLY. Meaning you're not wasting your time trying to memorize traps that are specific to that one opening, or wasting time worrying about microdifference between one pawn move or another (happens a lot in the QGD). You're striving for a solid setup with rapid development and central control for a kside attack, which is what studying openings should be teaching you to do. Once you learn the London setup, you can apply principles to other d4 openings as well. You won't be memorizing a ton of lines in the London, but you should go over a lot of master games to see the attacking setups.
- It's super solid for white. You will never get blown off the board in the first 10 moves unless you make a really gross blunder.
- Black's plan is usually much, much harder to come up with than white's. White almost always has a straightforward plan - develop, hold the center, and then attack with pieces and pawns on the kside. Black's plan and pawn structure is trickier - usually involving a non-obvious qside attack or a well time center counter thrust.
- Proven at GM level, and is in fact recently becoming actually popular at the GM level
The big negative as to why it's not a favorite system at the top levels:
- It's not as aggressive as white as the QGD or other systems where you play d4/c4. In the London, you often play d4/c3, which is considered more passive, and as a result, while you won't get blown away as white, you also will not blow black away in the opening as well.
- What ends up happening in the London is that the action is deferred to the middlegame in almost every game. However, since you know that as white, you will know the middlegame setups & plans much better than black (who's plan is already harder to find) and usually will get an advantage once you hit the later middlegame.
Don't expect to win most of your games when you start - when I started, I was a bit disappointed, as you don't get any of those "win a piece with a trap" situations in the London and you don't get a crushing position if the opponent blunders right out of the opening, but I stuck with it and found that the stronger my opponents get, the better the results with the London. (I'm actually happier to play more aggressive e4 tactical lines against weaker players than myself since I'll more likely get an early kill shot against weaker players - not the case against stronger players who won't give me that chance.)
I have "Play the London" by Cyrus Lakdawala, and it's how I started playing the London. Unfortunately, I really don't like Lakdawala as an author - I find his writing style distracting with needless comments and his style of play isn't as clear as I would like. Still, it's not a bad book, and it did teach me a more patient way to build an attack (Cyrus Ladkawala repeatedly admits he's a big chicken and almost always shies away from tactical complications if he can take a quieter positional route.) There are probably better ones out there, though. I actually gained most of my London knowledge through playing and reviewing my blitz games, with the exception of relying a lot on Cyrus's setups when playing the London vs the Kings Indian Defense (which you will see a LOT when you play the London), and I'll admit that I have a very good win ratio when entering this kind of a game thanks to the quality model games provided in the book - it's otherwise hard to crack the Kings Indian defense with the London if you don't have a good plan.
This morning I'm looking through a few lines in John Shaw's excellent book on the King's Gambit. I accidentally played 1...e5 while fixing dinner last night and won a wild King's Gambit against a strong opponent. After our moves 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Nc6 3.Nf3 exf4 4.Bc4 g5, Shaw points out that my opponent's 5.h4 is an error.
Studying openings is fun and productive, but it plays third fiddle to endgames and tactics.
I'm not as strong as you, but I too have that John Shaw King's Gambit book,and used to exclusively rely on the KG as my weapon as white. (Oddly enough, I'm now a London player, which is like the polar opposite ofthe wildly attacking KG!)
At least to me, now that I've played both the London and the KG, I will add that in my opinion, the King's Gambit is an example of an opening where you really HAVE to memorize a lot of sharp lines. Especially if you're playing the way John Shaw does in the KG,which is sharp, nonintuitive for both sides, and invovles a lot of tricky tactical play.
I mainly stopped playing the KG after my opponents started playing more and more ..e5 followed by ..d6 setups against me, which strangely enough, is almost not analzyed at all in Shaw's book, despite me finding it THE most common response to the KG that I get.
If you have a good line or recomendation in Shaw's book how to deal with ..e5 ..d6 type lines, would be helpful to hear about!
If you want to reach new heights in chess,Study openings and variations but if you just enjoy chess as a casual player,you can play what you are comfortable with.Iam a serious chess player and iam considering the switch to the latter plan
I remember reading that Fischer's recommendation for the first two chess books to read were: first "Modern Chess Openings", then second, reread "Modern Chess Openings." One major problem with your question is you are assuming that "learning" means memorization. That might be true in tactical openings, but not in more positional openings. You need to learn the ideas behind the chess openings when learning openings, in most cases. Then the chore becomes fun and very valuable. Recently I made significant progress on my understanding of chess because of studying opening ideas using my own "plan language" while documenting database openings used in my repertoire, and I'm becoming obsessed with relearning openings now as a result of understanding the reasons behind the moves. Unfortunately, that type of information is hard to find in opening books.
I have to confess.
I think openings are one of my favorite parts of the game.
The thing is not all openings in chess are perfect.
Sometimes you can play an opening and your opponent will give you a shocked facial expression.
I think it's great.
Other times you will play an opening and your opponent will play something and you will be the one with the shocked look.
I remember playing black against a player like 200+ points below my ranking.
They gave me the beating of my life.
He literally played 3.e5 here.
The move 3.e5 is not a challenging move.
It is playable.
However, on a scale of 1 to 10.
It would be a 5.
It is more of an equal/average move.
Which black should have no problem here.
However, against that guy I got crushed.
I have never had anyone play this move than get booked up/train in this variation.
He was so excited to beat me.
I was so upset.
You know I am still upset over that loss.
He was so happy smiling.
Than he started bragging.
He said "you have just lost to my pet line".
After he said that I was even more upset.
Which brings me to the point I am trying to make here.
I think people on this forum have forgotten something very important!
Not everyone in chess memorizes moves on purpose!!!!!
Sometimes chess players memorize moves out of "love"!!!!
It might be a shocking concept to some people on this forum.
However, it does happen.
My opponent for example:
After we finished talking smack to each other my opponent told me how he manage to win. He said he likes going over his line and its his favorite line.
He loves playing 3.e5 & he likes reviewing it over and over and over and over again.
If you love something so much and go over it so many times.
Eventually, you will remember the bloody thing.
You are not even trying to remember it.
It just happens.
Another example I can give you is one on my Grand Father.
He use to love collecting coins.
His hobby was collecting coins.
He use to go over them and polish them.
He had a coin fetish.
What was even more bizarre was he remembered every one of his coins.
When my family went to the flea market my father would say "Son watch my dad to make sure he doesn't wonder off."
Which was hilarious because it suppose to be the other way around.
Like my dad was suppose to tell my grandfather to watch me so I didn't wonder off.
However, it was the other way around.
It was funny.
When ever we went by a coin stand.
My grand father would make a break!
He looked like a running back going straight for the coin stand.
I would try to stop him.
No way to stop him.
He was on a mission.
Once he get there he would look at the coins.
There would be so many coins.
I couldn't tell any of them apart.
They all looked the same to me.
However, he would get all excited.
When ever he saw a coin he didn't have he would get gitty.
He would be like OOOOOOOOOO that is 1945 Jefferson War nickel right there.
Than he would start spinning around as if he was going to take off into flight with his ears or something.
It looked like a regular nickel to me.
However, actually they are not regular nickels.
Normal every day nickels have the metal content of cooper + nickel
However, in 1942-1945 some 5 cent nickels were not made with such content.
The main reason is because it was during World War 2 the US government tryed to save the metal of nickel for the war.
Thus, what they did was they replaced the metals with silver.
Which bascially means the coin is not worth 5 cents.
It is valued alot more than that because of the silver content in the coin.
This is not the first time it has happened in coins.
However, yeah some coins are very expensive.
Some penny's can sell for thousands of dollars in the right market.
Yeah during 1913-1938 they use to have the buffalo nickels which featured a bison/buffalo on the back of the nickel and an indian in the front of it.
They were pretty cool as well.
They eventually got replaced with the Jefferson nickel.
Which carryed over until the Jefferson War nickel.
After that it went back to Jefferson nickel.
Than during 2004-2005 they changed the nickel in dedication to Lewis and Clark.
Ultimately sticking with the Jefferson nickel.
Which is the nickel we use today.
Yeah you should know your nickels people!
Secondly...begnners have no chess style. Unless dropping pieces is a style.
?
You are using a strange definition of "style". What does dropping peices have to do with the kinds of positions you enjoy and try to steer the game towards?
The "dropping peices" crisis for beginners is largely overstated. First of all - both sides are beginners, so both sides tend to drop peices. It's tit for tat.
Also, higher level players drop peices. Indeed, even the top ten drop peices. Remember Kramnik dropping mate-in-one against the computer? Would you say that in that game Kramnik had no style because he dropped mate in one? That would be a strange definition of style.
So, I'm using a definition of style that has nothing to do with how often you drop peices, and I frankly have never heard of one that does rely on how often you drop peices. It's true that being tactically fit is the easiest way to overwhelm and defeat an opponent, but that still says nothing about style.
I obviously agree that you can overemphasize openings. That's the most common advice around - don't overstudy openings. But some people take this to an ideological extreme and see openings as taboo - they feel studying them makes them foolish. Is tactics more beneficial? Yes. Everybody knows and endlessly repeats that. But why not also study openings? It's fun, and that's why you play, right? Maybe you also play because you want to practice being a good sportsman, but doing that doesn't require you to study tactics... Unless you are a professional, you can relax and mostly just enjoy the game: we all suck and will always suck, so get over it.
But I think the main takeaway from this thread is clear: know your nickels!
Good opening study is about understanding the ideas behind the moves, rather than simply memorizing lines.
If thinking about opening moves bores you, it might be because you're thinking of it as a memorization exercise. Instead, try asking yourself why each move is played.
Why does black place his bishop on b4 in the Nimzo-Indian Defence?
Is it to pin the knight? Is it to threaten a trade that damages white's pawn structure? Is it to fight for control of the e4 square?
How about this position?
Why has white placed the bishop on f4? Is it so that he can play e3 next, opening a diagonal for his king bishop, while keeping his dark bishop active, outside his pawn chain?
Every good opening move has a reason behind it. For me, at least, the fun part about opening study isn't memorization, but figuring out why the moves are played.
Openings aren't just rote moves—they're moves budding with strategy, tactics, and positional aims.
Find the why behind the moves, and hopefully you'll find the enjoyment in them, too. :)
I would actually love to do as you say, yet I have not really found a good way in which to go about learning the "why behind the moves". I have not really found a good source which teaches this. Most books and videos make assumptions about what they deem to be "obvious" which many times leaves me in the dark as a relatively low-skilled player.