Try as I might, I'm not good at memorizing lines. Lately, I've been spending some time with Chris Ward's Play the Queen's Gambit, and for the first time, I've realized, rather than memorize separate strings, it's easier to remember branches! Eureka!

Hmmm .. that may not be clear. Ok for example, Ward recommends the exchange version of the QGD. I kept going over each line after black's third move and then realized, with the exception of one route, white's replies were the same! I know it sounds silly, but I had been trying to compartmentailize each line as if it were a separate entity, so this is a real discovery.

Also, I was wondering if anyone here uses mnemonic devices for opening lines or general concepts. I'll give my own example: In the Kalishnakov Sicilian, the two main lines after 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 2. d4 cxd4 3. Nxd4 e5 4. Nb5 d6 .... are 5. c4 or 5. Nc3 ...

c4 is a positional move shoring up white's control of d5 while Nf3 is more tactical. Rather than memorizing directly (which I'm quite bad at actually) I came up with Bishop ends with a p (positional) so 5. ... Be7

or with 5.Nc3 a6 6. Na3 b5 7. Nd5 (knight ends with t, so tactical) Nge7. I can visualize moves on the board, and do better with conceptual openings.

Okay, hope this isn't too much , but one more ... In this well known endgame exercise, with black to move how does he create a passed pawn? He pushes the middle one.


White can take with either the h or f pawn. Then what does black do?


He doesn't take, he goes in the little house! See the little house?

On the engame first. Black to move is ...f3, if white replies gxf3 then...h3 if white replies gxh4 then ....fxg2. Black will queen first & hopefully win the game. This is a stock position I have seen in a couple endgame books. On the opening I only memorise enough lines to get me to a an equal middlegame. Usually 7-12 lines depending on the opening. At club level your opponent will usually deviate from book quite early ...not a bad move mind you but, not the best recommended book move. Book moves tend to give best play for both sides & if your opponent deviates from this you have memorised a lot for nothing. Hope this helps you out.

I always feel that you should never set out to memorize openings. Simply by looking up where you deviated from book, and playing through master games in the openings you play, you'll learn a tremendous amount.

More important (until you get to be pretty damn strong) than memorizing moves is understanding how they fit into your plan. Knowing how to figure out what to do once you're out of your prep is far, far more important than the move number where your prep runs out.

Obviously, this technique ("don't study openings, learn them en passant") doesn't work for every opening. It's not going to do you much good in the Dragon or the KID.

But I'd argue that you probably shouldn't be playing those openings, anyway, until you're pretty damn strong.

(To Vitor) Oh dear. You missed my point on the endgame entirely. I know how it plays out. I was trying to illustrate how I use a memory trick to play it and was wondering if other players do similar things.

I usually remember openings by the plan that you are trying for. There are transpositional tricks which some of the authors that I have been studying recommend to avoid this or that variation but to this point I haven't really bothered. I usually played 1.d2-d4 after the late seventies and was not unduly afraid of any of the possible black responses. I was somewhat familiar with the Grunfeld, King's Indian, Benoni, Benko Gambit and Nimzoindian having played each as black at some point and was not in the mood to avoid any of them. Most of the Queens Gambit lines are not all that difficult to remember with the exception of some of the really crazy tactical lines in the Slav or various gambits. There is the one gambit line in the Tarrasch set up (Hennig-Scharra (sp?!)) where you have to remember to run your queen back to d1 and take pawns with the queen twice. The only real memorization that I did was to remember that the key idea was to return to d1 with the queen when things got hairy.

On move three I wouldn't even bother memorizing but would just play some sensible developing moves.

These lines were quite popular in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. I learned the lines by playing speed chess with a friend who played the lines. In a bit of psychological warfare I would play the line against him as black and usually win the openings on either side.

Crash

I don't know how strong I am. Damn strong I'm not. I was right at 1500 when I quit OTB several years ago. I've been playing games here in NYC and fairing much better against stronger players than I used to after a 10-year chess vacation. Of course none of these are long tournament style games, but they aren't all 5 minute blitz games either. I've fallen in with a group of guys who are 1700-2000 and though they are clearly stronger, I win a lot more games than I thought possible.

I explained this in an earlier post. This makes little sense to me, but I think the advantages of age have improved my game. I no longer care how strong my opponent is, in the sense that I just play the board, not the rating. Before if a player was rated higher, I'd just convince myself that I would lose outright. I'm also less likely to make speculative attacks or queen sorties just because I looked over a Morphy game last night!

Yeah the Hennig-Scary!

Well that seems to umm defeat the point of the exchange (though I could be wrong.) White has to follow move 3. with 4. cxd5 to avoid Cambridge Springs and some other variations.

Yeah, I'm actually dropping the Kalishnakov now in favor of Alekhine's defense. A lot has transpired in the chess world since 1997!

In response to me not bothering to memorize move 3
I did play the exchange when I was under the influence of Botvinnik's games and for a while thought that it was a forced win for white with the minority attack on the queenside. My mentors pointed out that it was not THAT easy. Later when I was under the influence of Tal's games I seemed to play Qc2 and aim for a kingside attack so I grew out of the exchange variation phase.

Yes.... and even more since 1996...

Crash

I find that I have the easiest time learning openings by trying them out, then looking up my games afterwards to see what I should have done. They're just more memorable that way.

For instance, sometimes I'll read an article, or play over a master game, but I won't remember how I am "supposed to" play it when it comes up. I blow it, look it up afterwards, and then I remember it for the next time.

This is part of why I'm trying to play more and study less for a bit, though I'm not very good at that, either. Getting sick right at the start of my new study plan isn't helping any.

--Fromper