Which Opening?
I’ve been getting that question in my classes quite often. Most of the time, the player is just wanting me to validate a choice already made. The question I always ask back is, “What are you wanting?”
One-trick pony openings like the Stonewall, the Colle, the Torre, etc., are good openings, and I’ve taught them many times over. If all you’re after is an opening that’s fairly solid and keeps you in the game, they are excellent choices. But they’re also dead ends.
What do I mean by “dead end?” You don’t have as much of an opportunity to learn about chess, and you don’t have easy ways to grow from there. Too often a Stonewall player will go through the game on “auto-pilot,” making the same moves, launching the same attacks. Your play will go stale.
If your goal is simply to win games, these sort of openings will do, because you will get the same positions over and over again. I coached one player who always played a Stonewall, and he got to be very adept at implementing the standard Stonewall plans, to the point where he wins more often than he loses. But at the same time, he gets confused and plays aimlessly when the standard plans aren’t available. We’ve worked on that, but his original choice of opening made it difficult because of the limited variety of positions it results in.
If your goal is to advance your chess understanding, then your choices need to be more flexible. For example Bronstein, in his excellent Modern Chess Self-Tutor, recommended 2. Nf3 over 2. f4 simply because White has more options after that. After 2. f4 White has committed himself to certain ideas and plans; after 2. Nf3 there is still a lot of mystery in the position.
Also, if an opening isn’t a dead end, then you can make minor changes and see different positions. For example, if you open with the Scotch Gambit, you get one set of positions, but can easily switch to the Scotch Game as you gain knowledge for completely different positions and plans. If you begin with the Ruy Lopez Exchange, you can make a few simple changes and see a wider variety of positions.
The more widely varied your experience is, the less likely you will be caught without a plan when your opponent goes off the beaten track. The tradeoff is that your results will suffer a little at the beginning. Hence the question: “What are you after?”
If all you want to do is score points, then study deeply any of the off-beat one-trick pony openings. I guarantee your scores will start to improve quickly. But when you want to expand your experience, be prepared to have to start all over again.
If you’re after real progress in chess, select openings like the Scotch Gambit, the Lopez Exchange, the Italian Game, the Queen’s Gambit. Your immediate results won’t be as good, but you also won’t have to completely abandon the work you’ve done when you want to advance your understanding of chess.
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:32 am
I’m under the impression that openings really don’t matter in the end. Even if a piece is lost right away, there’s still the middlegame and endgame to come back. Of course, in GM vs GM, the game’s lost, but not at, say, my level. I’ve played my fair share of games in which I’ve dropped a piece in the opening, then played my way back into the game later.
One of my chess buddy’s parents is always emphasizing that openings don’t really matter until extremely high levels of chess. In friendly games against him, I’ve played against 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f5 and other offbeat things like that. And I pretty much always lose to him. Time to get back to work on tactics…
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:21 am
The only way in which opening choices matter is in where you go from where you’re at. All openings are playable, so long as your opponent is rated under, say 2600. Some of Nakamura’s crazy experiments prove that.
But the choice of an opening can matter to your eventual progress in chess. Openings like those I characterized as “dead-end” make it more difficult to move on to other openings that result in other kinds of middlegame positions. They don’t yield ready ways to move on to other types of middlegame positions. Which means they make progressing through chess more difficult than it should be.
But as long as that isn’t a problem for you, then you’re right. Opening choice doesn’t matter in the least so long as you don’t let yourself stagnate.
Don’t let your chess buddy’s parent get to you. The biggest trap in most off-beat openings is the temptation to try and blow them off the board. Avoid the temptation and be willing to settle for a slight edge, and play on into the middle game. Most players who select those kind of openings are fairly good tacticians, and they intend to get you out of your books as soon as possible so they can play their style of game. Remember Petrosian’s Rule: White is always equal and Black is always slightly worse. Aim for those kind of positions, and play within yourself.
As you said, work on the tactical portion of your own game and you’ll be fine.
BTW, 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 f5 3 ef e4 4 Ne5 Nf6 5 Be2 with Bh5 to follow is an interesting line against the Latvian. It leads to play analogous to Cunnigham’s Defence to the King’s gambit, with a move in hand. But that might require some experience with the King’s Gambit to play well. As someone who has played the King’s Gambit for several decades, I am always amazed when someone wants to adopt it with the colors reversed; the game is so double-edged giving away a single tempo in many lines is catastrophic. Paul Keres seemed to like 3 Bc4 (since Black’s second move did nothing for development, White charges ahead) but I wouldn’t recommend that until you’re more comfortable in tactical positions (if you don’t readily see why, then look at the position after 3 … fe4 4 Ne5 Qg5, though 4 … d5 5 Qh5 is no smooth walk in the park, either). Or you can play like everyone else with 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 f5 3 Ne5 Qf6 4 Nc4 fe4 5 Nc3 Qf7 6 Ne3 (I’ll let you work out the consequences of 6…c6 7 d3 ed3 8 Bd3 d5 9 0-0 d4 for yourself; good training for your tactical eye.)
December 7th, 2006 at 1:17 am
As a 1600 player, (inactive for 25 years, but soon to be active again via postal chess), I split the difference. As White, I used both 1.e4 and 1.f4. Not sure if Bird’s Opening counts as a “system opening”, but it is close enough. 1.e4 forced me to learn something about the usual defenses, which was helpful for me on the black side of 1.e4.
1.f4 gave me a “system” type opening. I had two strategies, depending on my mood, opponent, need for + =, etc. In other words, even at my level of play, it is not a question of what one opening to play, but rather have two. For an amateur like me, having a “system” opening and a “real” opening worked well.
I agree with the original poster that soley relying on a “system” opening is not a good idea, but not a bad thing to have in one’s bag of tricks.
December 7th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
“System opening” is a bit vague, as in a manner of speaking even the Ruy Lopez is a system. The term Ken Smith used to use was “forcing” opening, meaning it forces the course of the game into a narrow channel.
That being said, yes, Bird’s fits that description. Note I said there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. But it’s limiting if your goal is to learn as much about chess as you can, because it doesn’t allow you to build off it readily.
I play both the Colle and Bird’s in tournament games, there’s nothing realy wrong with them. (As I grew to understand more about endgames I even gained a further appreciation for the Colle, because of the winning endgame opponents often offered me without realizing it.) I learned them as a youngster because they were easy to learn and got me out of the opening without falling into a trap in unfamiliar territory. The down side was the effort I had to put into learning something else once I got bored with the positions.
That’s why I called them “dead end” openings. Maybe I should have used the term “cul de sac” instead — it doesn’t sound as perjorative. They’re fine openings to learn and play, especially for players who don’t have the time to study the eleventy-milion opening lines needed for some of the more popular lines of today.
December 8th, 2006 at 12:58 am
I agree that a certain boredom factor can set in with the “system” type opening, leading to dull play and too many draws as white. A good reason to also have a broader “system” of a standard opening, such as 1.e4. My experience using Bird’s opening was that if my opponent played well, I tended to make rote moves, in Bird’s case often a stonewall setup which is drawish and uninspiring.
This was more my fault than Bird’s, but such openings can lead one down such paths. Sharper openings forces one to be more on his toes, and an obvious lesson is that a viable “system” opening should not be played without imagination. The siren song of a set series of moves, regardless of order, that will lead to an advantage, is fool’s gold.
On the otherhand, if the Colle System offers a good endgame against good play, and winning chances against mediocre play, then it is a good weapon. Perhaps too much emphasis is placed on getting an advantage in the opening ?
December 8th, 2006 at 8:54 am
These days my advice for improving players has been the Italian Game complex, especially the Scotch or Italian Gambits, because they lead to nice active middlegame positions. But the Colle is second on the list, for much the same reason, and because it’s fundamentally solid, meaning you don’t compromise your endgame chances in order to get a tactical game.
Opening advantages become nore important as the ratings of the players involved increase. Below 2000 a player can be counted on to make enough serious mistakes to wipe out most opening advantages they may acquire, so an advantage for those players is generally not relevant. But as the player approaches 2000 the liklihood of those mistakes lessens, so that an advantage gained at any point in the game will become less likely to be lost.
At a recent Scholastic Championship Anatoly Karpov set 1800-2000 as the range where a player should begin to study openings; until that point the player should know the principles, but should be working on middlegame and endgame skills.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Speaking as a 1600 type player, I agree with you vis a vis the Italian openings, but that also means means one must be prepared for the Petrov defense, Sicilian, etc., hence the attraction of the system opening. Karpov is probably correct, but in my younger days my thought was to get to the endgame I had to survive the middlegame, and to get to middlegame I had to survive the opening.
If my opponent knew the endgame well, but was deficient in the opening, then I could beat him before we got to his area of strength.
Nowadays, after 25 years away from the game, and less concerned with my early win/lose/draw ratio, I’ve decided to focus on my endgame, just as all the old chess manuals I used to read suggested. In the long run, what you say is correct, but difficult for a young player to accept.
Of course that is the good thing about a young player having a tutor who can guide him. For me, I was tutored by books, and I mostly chose opening books and game collections.
My copies of Fine’s “Basic Chess Endings” and Keres’ “Practical Chess Endings” were only grudgingly consulted, while Fine’s “Ideas Behind the Chess Openings” and the Horowitz opening encyclopedia, (name escapes me), were well thumbed.
Long term improvement is more important than short term gain.
Nice chess website by the way !
December 11th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Bill Williams, local master, once answered my request for guidance on which areas to study with this rather quotable remark: “To win games, study openings. To understand chess, study endgames.”
The remark has stuck with me. Opening study does get you points; you win games via traps (one of my students won a couple of short games with a standard Scotch Gambit trap) but that doesn’t help you understand how to play chess. You’ll win your share of games where opponents fall into traps, but when they don’t, you’re no farther along the road to victory.
But if you study middlegames, especially developing your tactical vision, you’ll be able to escape many opening traps, and when you do finally arrive at the middle game, you’re far better equipped to win the game than if you’d spent that time studying openings.
I’ve found sometimes you can “trick” people into studying endgames if you don’t use that term. Instead you do “concentrated study” on the powers of a single piece, showing it in action against other pieces. So instead of showing a “R v N endgame” I say that I’m going to talk about how a Rook fights against a Knight. We start with a simple position and then add a few more elements to it, until we end up in a complicated middlegame position. The “simple positions” are endgames, of course.
You know the best way to learn the tatical possibilities of a piece? It’s in an endgame. The lack of other pieces makes it easier to focus on one piece. And it’s impossible to learn R+P endgames without giving serious attention to the skewer; it’s a major theme of those endgames. And it’s easier to see and understand the tatics when there aren’t a lot of other pieces in the way.
The problem with most endgame instruction books is they’re dry. “Practical Chess Endings” is less dry and more accessible than “Basic Chess Endings” but still the same problem. Shereshevsky’s “Endgame Strategy” is a better work by far, but then it doesn’t deal with basic positions, but rather as a general tome for those who already know the elementary positions.
In order to get to the more interesting parts of endgames, you have to be familiar with the basic positions, and those are fairly dry. But much like scales do for the musician, they enable the chessplayer to create beauty.
I was watching a couple of friends in a tournament this past weekend playing out a R+3p v R+2p endgame, and was getting lost in the maze of calculations. Then one side gave up a pawn, which at first looked like a mistake. But there was a hidden resource in the position, and after I found it I realized there was a forced win on the board. Sure enough, an hour later the game was over.
And once again I realized the truth in Bill’s offhand remark. No amount of opening study could have prepared one to play that game, or to appreciate it. I suppose early in life it’s more fun to memorize than it is to search for your own path. But as you mature, you realize it’s more important to find your own path than it is to follow by rote. Once you’re ready to ask the question “Why?” you’re ready to put down the opening books and actually study chess.