Improving beyond 2000

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ninjaswat

(blueemu has far more experience than I do and I wholly endorse his advice in his posts, much of it helped me a year or two back haha)

blueemu
chamo2074 wrote:

Another thing is openings, my current rep is:

White: Vienna - Little theory and very practical to play, but I was thinking of upgrading to a 'real' opening if you know what I mean, like the Ruy Lopez because sometimes all it gets you is an equal or even slightly worse position if your opponent knows what to do. Although some of them do fall for it, many 2ks actually do pretty well against me when I play it.

Black: French (I'm quite familiar with it having played it for a long time although I've avoided many main lines) and KID (I need to catch up on the theory of this one and the chess geek series is helping me). I would say the french and the KID taught me a lot about specific plans in specific positions (e.g what to do with a bad bishop or when we have less space in the center, pawn breaks, kingside vs queenside pawn attacks), but they're rather dense and theoretical, especially the KID, and everytime I play the french I get bored to hell by the exchange variation. Everyone plays it to avoid the complications and it kills the excitement out of the game.

Don't know if I should change anything or just stick to what I know.

If you are playing the French (vs e4) and the KID (vs d4) as Black, why aren't you playing the King's Indian Attack as White?

That opening position (the King's Indian Attack) is usually reached from the Reti Opening.
 
chamo2074

Thanks. I had never heard of this method it seems really interesting.

And as for the KIA YES I was considering to play it especially against the french so yeah I'm probably going to go for it as a weapon against the french at first and will slowly assess whether I replace the Vienna with it. As for endgames, from your experience where do you think I should be? I think I'm quite behind in terms of endgames. I usually find myself kind of blank, and unsure when it comes to decisions either in the endgame or leading into the endgame.

chamo2074

By the way is this one of your games?

blueemu
chamo2074 wrote:

By the way is this one of your games?

Yes, that's me vs 1900-rated Roland Basque, in a CFC (Canadian Chess Federation)-rated tournament in Edmondston NB Canada, back in the early 1980s. I won the tournament.

The usual book name for that KIA system is "Barcza System". You can probably look it up under that name. It can arise from a Reti, from a French, or from an e6 Sicilian...

Endgames... the most important endgames are K+P's vs K+P's, and K+R+P's vs K+R+Ps. Other endgames are rather less common.

You should certainly make sure you understand the general rules for King-and-Pawn endgames (opposition, zugzwang, the square) and for King and Rook and Pawn endgames (eg: the Lucena position).

Are you familiar with the Savaadra position?

blueemu

Here's another rated KIA game.