When I learned to play chess I had nobody to help me as there was no other chess players around. I did have three books…the best games of Alekhine, Botvinnik & Reshevsky. All I ever did was play over games in those books (wore the covers off) and naturally played the openings they played: English, QGD, French and Gruenfeld were my main weapons. I played postal chess about 2 years always using my books trying to find similar positions to those arising in my cc games so I’d have some idea of how to continue. I was learning pattern recognition. I finally entered my first OTB event and came out with a 1667 rating.
I see so many players discussing how to get to 1600 and often struggling so hard and most never making it. Then I read threads like this all over the Internet and see all kinds of advice. Guys like GM John Nunn and GM Alex Yermolinsky say things like:
“A particular genre of books which deserves special attention is that dealing with dubious and rarely played openings. …Unfortunately, 99% of the time the reasons (Opening) X is rarely played are entirely justified, the recent games turn out to be encounters of little value…” If they had any value, GM’s would be playing them.
Nunn then proceeded to give an example of the Latvian Gambit from a book by Tony Kosten, stating “…I was quite baffled as to how the author had managed to fill up 144 pages; I had thought a detailed refutation would take 10 pages at most.” He then proceeded to refute several lines in Kosten’s book. He does the same for a book on the Guioco Piano by GM Andrew Soltis. He also observes, “…authors display great ingenuity in finding resources for their side, but often overlook even quite simple tactical defenses for the other side.” His advice essentially is don’t play these openings.
People rarely listen to them.
No matter how well booked up you are sooner or later you’re going to have to choose your own moves. When that happens you’re going to play to the level of your rating. No opening in the world is going to help you win more games. The only way that’s going to happen is to improve overall then it won’t really matter what opening you find yourself in, you’ll be able to hold your own.
The fact is players are often looking for an easy way to win games and a lot of opening book authors are holding out false hope. If two very strong GM’s are advising you to play solid, tried and tested mainline openings and avoid offbeat, second-rate openings and you won’t take their advice, then there is not much hope that you will ever improve. Getting to 1600, which is only slightly above average, is not that difficult and should not take years if players would only listen to good advice and not be looking for some one secret thing they have to do to reach their goal.
You learn the basic outlines of a couple classic openings, study some tactical books (the ones that explain WHY the combination works not just showing you a position and telling you the result), get some middlegame basic strategy knowledge, study some K&P and R&P endings. Then you play over a few hundred master games trying to guess the next move (at least that way you're paying some attention, not just shifting pieces) and watch your rating go up.
Linear Mode
