To Play or not to Play Vanilla Chess Openings

A common piece of advice often heard is that improving players should play "sound tactical openings" in order to improve. Another statement is that "anything is playable below Master level". This is very interesting to me and at the same time very confusing. I really would like to gain a better understanding of the situation. 

If open tactical games is food for brain and a solid ground for Improvement, then why not play wild gambits?

If you you offer your opponent a substantial advantage, then you will have a difficult task winning. Still, I do not see how playing loosing positions will slow down your improvement process. It is a canonical advice to play stronger opponents in order to improve. Playing against a stronger opponent is a loosing position. 

If  you play a strange gambit with a name worthy of a middle earth dwarven prince lord, then you might have problems playing Magnus Carlsen but is it really the gambit to blame?

My home work for you, dear readers, is to come up with arguments for why it is benefitial for Chess Improvement to play vanilla Openings.

Gambit not so Galore

My first flirt with the Gibbens-Weidenhagen gambit was like a Microsoft demo. Everything looks fine but it just doesn't work properly. After just a few moves I had a clear advantage against a decent player. For the price of a g-pawn I had the center, easy development and self-confidence. But then reality crushed in! After a few weak moves I just got outplayed.

Note to self: Openings never replace thinking.

  

My second and last try with the gambit started bad and then got worse. My opponent played daring active moves and soon I found myself on a position hated by Mr Houdini and with My king as exposed as the king in a well known H.C Andersen story.

Does it make sense to play gambits with long medival double names? Well, why do you play Chess? If your answer is "to have fun" or "to exercise the brain", then why not? The road less travelled will take you to uncharted territory fast where you and your opponent will have to play Chess. What about the first move advantage? I am convinced that experience from playing wild weird stuff will offer a practical advantage. And do not forget the fun factor.

 Post Scriptum: Check out what Frisco has to say: Frisco's Post

Silver Tape Treatment of 1. e4

I very much like the outline of the opening books from Chess Star Publishing and their "three step approach" which makes learning the appropriate amount of theory or ideas much easier.

Vladimir Barsky's "The Modern Philidor Defence" offer a few useful pieces of advice for the Silver Tape Repertoire. The tweet sized summary is to play "1. e4 d6" to reach the backbone structure of the Silver Tape repertoire (See previous post).

How about the typical Philidor endgame (1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 e5 4. dxe5 dxe5 5. Qxd8+ Kxd8)? According to Vladimir gets some initiative but it is still a chess game.

A Silver Tape Repertoire

I might have found a cure for My Opening Phobia: A sturdy mix of Philidor and the Old Indian This is obviously not the most explosive mixture but I can see practical advantages such as surviving well into the middlegame and also find yourself in a somewhat familiar setting. With a cunning move order you will reach the following position quite often:

Is there any disadvantages? Well, it is often said that improvers should play open games in order to learn the most and to fine tune their skills but I beg to differ. There will be tactics sooner or later and I can see no harm in delaying the fire works for a while. I find comfort in the following quote by Lajos Portisch:

"Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame." 

What about the white pieces? Anything is playable below master level and especially with the white pieces. Having the first move offers a distinct tiny temporal advantage. My perhaps naive guiding rule when choosing an opening as white is the "Fun Factor". I enjoy playing wild, theory dense and crazy stuff when I have the first move advantage. My opponent will have to "follow suit" until the slight first move initiative evaporates and hopefully the game by then has reached something middlegame-esque. Yes, I might fumble into a onesided theory battle but ignorance is a bliss and I might learn something.

Heroes of the Old Indian

A53: David Bronstein 22 games
A54: David Bronstein 23 games
A55: Bent Larsen 11 games

Enjoy!


Try this link to get the games as pdf or this link to get a copy of the pgn-file.

Magic Pill Again

Some time ago Dan Heisman tweeted: "If I gave a pill to a 1400 player so that he/she memorizes MCO-15, what would their new playing strength be? Most properly guess 1400-1450"

Some member on www.chess.com is doing a simulation in a Magic Pill-esque setting and here is what (s)he reports:

"Information from my test:

Two identical engines playing each other at about 1400 elo, except one is using an opening book, and the other is not. The opening book is Sedat's Perfect v10 book, with the depth limited to no more than 15 full moves.  My guess is that this opening book is a decent approximation for MCO. So far, 700 games have been played. The engine with the book is +28 elo, with a possible error of plus or minus 12 elo at a 95% confidence interval."

The Act of Learning

Star Chess Blogger Greg posted a tweet with a version of the Immortal Chess Question:

"I keep wishing someone would write a book for club players on the process of learning openings." (follow @bumpaguv)

The question is remotely related to the Magic Pill question tweeted by Dan Heisman.Does it really help (in a time efficient way) the chess development of improving players to learn openings?

Well, maybe we need a clearer picture of the meaning of "learning openings".

GM Nigel Davies is hinting at a new approach to learning openings in a recent blog post. I hope to be able to learn a little about the "secret sauce" invented by Nigel. The backbone of the idea appears to be to "Guess-the-Move" instructive games.

Another interesting claim by Dan Heisman is that improving players should stick to basic principles when playing chess. I don't remember the exact numbers but Dan suggested that a 1700-player would be wrong in about 50% of the cases when deciding to go against basic principles.

Factoids: Playing fellow chess improvers will lead to games that is out of book theory in no time.

Improving players should stick to well established guiding principles.

Ergo: The typical chess lover will never be able to learn enough theory and only the sound application of basic opening principles will save our bacon and help us to a playable middlegame.

Is that to ask for too little? I guess the difference in evaluation between different candidate moves which all can be justified by basic opening principles is somewhere on the centipawn scale. The typical side effects of moves driven by the blunder gland is on the "snatch-one-of-my-pieces scale".

Suggested antidote for Openingphobia (version 12.37):

Replay mastergames using the opening of your choice and figure out how the basic opening  principles of your chess hero is justifying all the moves in the opening phase (say until the rooks are connected).

If you decide to familiarize yourself with gambit play, then I assume that you just have to bite the bullet and accept the gambit move for the fun of it!

Shine on You Rusty Piece of Coal

So, I made another blunder! But I somehow think that this position has more challenges than I first thought. My first alternative was to throw a knight into e5 but my shallow calculation didn't promise any future in that line. How I finally decided to push the pawn to fe is a mystery to me.

Playing small tournaments against Chessmaster profiles is my bread and butter these days. You have to see a lot of silly engine-trying-to-play-bad-moves but on the other hand you cet which is absolutely necessary for my to get close to the chess board.

The b6-repertoire is still tempting but I have decided to give the Fort Knox/Weird Indian stuff-combo another chance to win my heart. Here are a few articles which I have enjoyed reading:

Stonewall Attack

Weird Indian Stuff (part I)

Weird Indian Stuff (part II)

Improve Your Chess Game

The Never Ending Story

Yes, I have spent almost as many hours contemplating chess openings as actually playing the Game of Kings.

Yes, I realize that most games stays within theory for at most 4 moves.

Still, I cannot resist to go into the "what-to-play-loop" yet again.

So, I have been faithful to the Good Old London System for some time but I am getting bored with it. Rumor has it that David Rudel is working on a new Colle book. Changing from the London to some version of Colle is perhaps not as refreshing as I would like. I feel "1. e4??" is coming my way. "Chess Openings for Kids" will be my compass into the hopefully revitalizing world of double pawn openings.

Blog readers with a sweet tooth for betting should know that the Total for number of months until the next Opening Phobia Attack is 3.5.

The Only Opening Book You Will Ever Need?

"Chess Openings for Kids" by John Watson and Graham Burgess

Too many opening books on the book shelves? Still wondering what you would like to play? Well known chess authors John Watson and Graham Burgess might have written the perfect introduction to 50 well known openings and at the same time the only opening book most of us will ever need!

Burgess' "The Mammoth Book of Chess" is a wonderful book. Perhaps the most useful section of that book is the personal and opinionated short introductions to a great number of openings. In "Chess Openings for Kids" Burgess and opening expert John Watson takes it one step further by focusing on fewer openings and adding a little more depth.

After reading through all of the introductions to the 50 mighty opening systems if feel that I want to try them all at once. To be able to provide both enthusiasm, inspiration and basic knowledge is a praise worthy effort.

Highly recommended as a first book on openings and maybe as the book that will replace all the unread opening books in your chess library.

KID me not!?

So, after talking to an experienced and very skilled chess player I am back to square one in the tricky maze leading to the openings you like to play. My new source of inspiration suggested a flirt with KID. The first few moves looks reasonable and fairly easy to understand but then? I have been looking at a few astonishing wins for Black using KID and I am totally and absolutely sure that I will never be able to play a game like that. Not only is the tactics and plans way above my limited skills but also is the flow of the game something completely different than my Grinding Caveman Chess.

So, Dear Readers! What is your take on the KID?

The Gospel of Evaluations

I have recently been playing a certain UCO Opening as Black which Mr Fritz frowns upon (+0,95 +/-). This very opening have been quite good for me as Black in semi serious games vs Shredder's iPhone App. Over the last ten games, I have had an performance of 1500+ which is much higher than my ICC rating.

How much should one humble patzer care about theory and evaluations?

Another interesting aspect is the "Blunder Distribution" for players of different strengths. Looking at the changes in Evaluations in any ordinary game by yours truly, you find the evaluation dropping but about a piece every twenty moves or so. That is indeed scary!

So, if I find an opening that I enjoy playing and the opening (as far as I know) is free of traps or wild forced tactical lines. Is that a cure or remedy for Opening Phobia? You often hear or read that you should stick to validated solid lines that will that will be your guide and support throughout your chess career.

Well, my career might find a peak and a plateau at 1700ish some years down the road (loosely guesstimated by a quote from Pandolfini(?) claiming that anyone capable of thinking three moves deep is able to reach 1700) and I think that any opening that avoids donating wood and glaring positional sacrifices should be OK for a 1700 future me.

So, Evaluations are funny stuff. What does it really mean to be down by almost a full pawn (according to Mr Fritz) in a position that in no obvious way is doomed to loose a pawn? I guess Mr Fritz is betting on Soft Values such as "more space" and perhaps "superior control over the center" but these are features not forever and is it absolutely sure that someone capable of dropping a piece every 20 moves is capable of cashing in on "more space"?

Dear Reader, Have I cured my Opening Phobia? I Dare not Say but I will keep playing Weapon X for a while. I hope to be able to post some interesting game with the stuff in action pretty soon.

To Caissa

Dear Caissa, Yes, I have been a good patzer wasting time reading opening books and watching Opening DVDs. Thank you for assisting my practice by inducing a fair amount of Opening Phobia into my limited brain.

I have come to the conclussion that there are semi solid reasons for walk down randomly along a new set of opening lines.

As a humble token for my devotion to patzerhood, I have also donated a few coins to the chess book industry.

My first Team4545 League game is scheduled for Sunday and I just might try the new scary stuff in the very first game.

UCO, here I come!

Act Your Age!

Opening Phobia strikes again! The symptoms are the same but the remedy will be different:

A repertoire under investigations for Public Health concerns for being overly sleep inducing and by chess authorities for being an insult to the spirit of Chess.

In the mean spirit of genuinely grumpy old geezers, my three legged Milk Stool Repertoire will from now on be based upon: The London System, Stonewall Dutch and French Fort Knox.

Why spreading the word? Well, the surprise value for all three openings is a fine approximation of zero. Furthermore, I do not mind playing well prepared opponents as it will help me to learn and understand the openings to some degree.

Haiku!

Silman’s ”Complete Endgame Course” is a great leap forward in Chess Teaching. The fantastic idea to present the material on a need-to-know basis is just great. When will there be opening books using the same trick? It is somewhat amusing to glance through basic books on specific openings and see how the author presents lines 15-20 moves deep! Basic books!

Casually surfing the Internet for inspiration on how to face “d4”, I found the stamp sized introduction to a few openings. This basic website presented a few versions of the Dutch as follows: “This is the position Black is hoping for and here are the first eight moves black would like to play”

That is pure poetry! What else would you like to be presented to have a taste of the opening?
So, the next opening book I buy will probably be written as a single Haiku.

Swimming with sharks

I have decided to join the Tuesday League at ICC. It looks as if they have cancelled the U1500 section (or what is U1800?) so I get a chance to wrestle with the Elephants and dance with the Sharks or whatever.

Another attack of Opening Phobia is haunting me! I wish I could find a Low Maintenance Repertoire to my liking. I suppose wishful thinking is the true sign of a Grand Patzer?