Urusov Gambit - a good opening but really it is just a transpositional tool to reach the Two Knights Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nf3 Nc6 is the same as 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.d4 exd4)
And yes, it is full of tactics if Black doesn't know what he is doing. Any opening like this is a great choice for beginning tournament players. It will help with tactics for sure.
If you copycat the moves one difference I've seen between the 2N and the Urusov Gambit is that in the latter the Nf3 knight is on the way ...
I always enjoy your five cents.
I have chess engines and Chessbase, so I am not interested in another software package to store and analyze my games. I would like to have a program that can keep track of the openings that I play, and the ones that need constant tweaking. I’d very much like to have a program that can display this information like chess.com’s Game Explorer, in a tree. Right now, all of my games are organized by date, and that’s all. It would be nice to also store them by openings. I have not figured out how to do that in Chessbase yet.
Do you know how to organize games by openings in SCID?
I’m currently smoothing out my repertoire against the French, because I always play 2.d4 after 1.e6, and if my opponent plays the most popular move, 2…d5, I need to have a move that I like. Well, I know that I don’t like the Winawer (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4) because of that annoying pin, and the doubled pawns after (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3 6.bxc3). After some reading I’ve settled on the Tarrasch with 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2). The upside to Nd2 is that there is no pin, e4 still gets a defender, with the downside being the temporarily blocked bishop at c1. Sigbert Tarrasch came to hate his own opening, but I don’t care. I think it is brilliant!
As a beginner, am I studying opening theory? Hardly any, really. I’m not even going 10 moves deep, nor 20-25, like GM’s. It’s more just a case of surviving the opening and having a good time playing chess.
Wait a minute ... Game explorer shows you the moves played by 2xxx players in tournaments isn't it?
SCID with the engine shows you what happens when you or your opponent make subpar moves which is very informative and realistic at our level, the engine comes up with unexpected combination you would hardly see and you even learn tactics in the process and you can store those combinations in your personal library for later use.
There's a tree function and you can search your games by a given position or material too. The sharper the position the more useful the approach is otherwise IMO is better to just know the general setups and plans.
Regards