As I mentioned in the "Gambits" thread, I'm changing up my opening repertoire. In looking up information on some of the gambits I want to try, I'm noticing a trend that seems to apply to most instructional material about any opening. Most articles and books on how to play an opening focus on the best moves to play in that opening, going into deep lines, examples from master play, etc. That might be how masters study openings, but that's not the material that an average player trying an opening for the first time really needs.

To start playing an opening, there are three pieces of information you really need about that opening:

1. The defining moves of the opening. Duh. Actually, I'll go one step further and say that knowing the most common continuation for another 2-3 moves is helpful, too. How many newbies play 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 and don't know where to go from there? If white just knew that 4. c3 supporting 5. d4 is the normal route, he'd do much better than the usual boring games that most beginners end up with.

2. The general plan of the opening. Which squares do you generally want to develop the pieces to? Where's the pawn structure going? Which side do you normally castle (if at all)? The exact move orders given in most instructions I've seen end up covering all this, but only if you spend a few hours reading dozens of variations and playing over full games. There are certain trends that tend to play out in most of those variations, so having those laid out up front would make it easier to get started playing the opening, because 5 minutes of reading would sum up the key points. Figuring out the exact move order to get there can come later.

3. Traps in the opening. I'm not talking about the "If you set this trap and your opponent is a blind chimpanzee, he might fall for it" stuff. I'm talking about the reasonable developing moves that an experienced player might make, if they don't know that there's a good reason not to play them in this particular opening. For instance, I'm learning the Smith-Morra Gambit, and apparently the author of the 7 part Chessville article on that opening disagrees with me that knowing how to avoid the common "Siberian Trap" is more immediately important than knowing every detail of how Kasparov played a particular main line in a 1988 game that ended in a draw.

If you've got those 3 things, you start playing the opening without it being a total disaster, even if you don't know all the main lines and what order to play certain moves. You'll compare your games to the "book" lines afterwards to learn those little improvements as you go, eventually becoming an expert on that opening. That's much better than spending hours studying opening theory that may or may not really come up in your games.

I have no idea why I felt the need to point out that I think opening articles should be structured this way. It's not like any of us are the ones writing those articles. But I guess it might be useful if anyone here recommends openings or opening books/articles, if you agree with me, you can point out this information when recommending an opening to someone, or point out what articles and books do or don't have this type of info on their opening.

--Fromper

There is a surprising amount of basic information on openings at Wikipedia.

Siberian Trap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

flush

That's a nifty idea! I never thought to check wikis for opening info.

@Fromper: Sounds like you want Ideas Behind the Gambit Openings by a modern Rueben Fine

Some stuff is on Wiki, but some of the more oddball openings I'm looking at are barely covered there. And the entries on some openings that are considered unsound were clearly written by people who have no respect for the opening at all. Just because an opening isn't good enough for GM level play doesn't mean it isn't a perfectly respectable weapon at the class level.

For instance: Elephant Gambit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From other articles I've seen on the internet, some of the lines given aren't even the main lines. And the author of that Wiki article was clearly just quoting MCO-14 (note the references to de Firmian), rather than being someone who actually plays the opening.

--Fromper

I often feel more comfortable playing an opening if I've played through 1-2 clear GM games, illustrating the major principles, already. It gives me something to aim for.

Recommendation for those of you who play OTB.
Learn 4 Openings. 2 for White, and 2 for Black.
Since you may be playing the same players over and over, change you
Openings about every 6 months.
Secondly, In the 60's I did what Leonard Barden did, I kept my Openings
on 3x5 or 5x8 cards. (I used both). I kept my opening secrets in a notebook.
Since in those days, no computers. Traps could be sprung.
I won a games against a Soviet player in 7 moves springing a trap
from my notebook. Knowing that every player used the same German and Russian books, I spotted a series of moves in the Dragon which trapped
my Soviet opponent.
In other words never take anything for granted. I have spotted errors in
books by Keene, and ECO as well.
Since most of you have chess software, HIARCS, Fritz, or whatever test
what you read in books. For practice if you have Shredder practice with Shredder. I know Shredder is not kind. But the practice is good.

I was actually thinking about this.

Since I'm switching to an opening repertoire with lots of unsound gambits, I've been thinking I should have backup plans in mind in case I face the same opponent twice in tournaments. If I beat them with an oddball gambit the first time, they're likely to go search the internet for a refutation and figure out how to make my life difficult.

This could happen, for instance, if I play in the U1600 section of both the Southern Open next weekend and the Florida State Championship a month later. Not sure if I can go to the state championship yet, though.

I think some of my openings are stable enough to survive that, but I don't think I'd try the Englund Gambit or Elephant Gambit twice on the same person. And that's pretty much my whole black repertoire right there! I can easily switch back to the other openings I used to play before switching to the gambits, though.

I do like the idea of consolidating the main lines that I learned from articles and stuff, and saving them on papers that I can review at the tourney (I don't have a laptop computer). That's why I started the thread on how to keep track of the opening repertoire.

--Fromper

This fear is, I believe, based on a slightly narrow definition of gambits.

A lot of people think gambits are "trappy" openings, that it's all about catching an opponent unprepared and blowing him off the board.

But that's not true. A gambit is, really, an attempt to ask the question "What's a pawn worth?"

Development? Structural advantages? Control of weak squares? More space?

With most reasonable gambits, it's not like the resulting position - even if your opponent plays correctly - is a clear win for the gambitee.

I would play the Smith-Morra or the Evans comfortably against someone who had an opening book on their lap. Probably the Goring, too.

One of the things you'll realize when you play gambits is that your opponents consistently underestimate them - even when they've done their homework. You usually get advantages that don't go away just because your opponent plays "correctly" - you've still got pressure and greater mobility in exchange for that pawn.

And since players at your level hang pawns all the freakin' time, which would you rather have?

Yes, it's loads of fun to play an offbeat gambit and win in 15 moves - but that's not why you play a gambit. You play a gambit because the type of middlegame which results favors a player with your skills (or, at least, the key skills you're playing a gambit to develop).

Few players - even knowing they're going to play a gambiteer - are going to spend a lot of time looking for refutations to your gambit. You'll see the gambit declined more often once you've taken a scalp or two with it. You'll see the gambit avoided more often (usually with an inferior move). But a lot of the time they'll look it up in MCO and say, "oh, that's good for me!" maybe memorize one or two lines which MCO says are "=" or "-/=" and be done with it.

But you know better. You know that even that "-/=" means that he's got an extra pawn but that you've got SOME compensation. You're going to still be attacking aggressively and he's still going to have to find some accurate defensive moves that aren't in that MCO column.

Oh, yeah, and work on your endgames. Sometimes, yes, your opponent will play well, and you'll find yourself in a pawn down endgame. But so what? Rather than worry about a backup opening, work on those rook endgames and frustrate the hell out of your opponent by drawing him even when he outplays you in the middlegame!

What's a pawn worth? At the U1600 level, I'd say that avoiding closed games and getting my opponents out of their memorized opening preparation is compensation for the pawn, even if I don't get much of anything else.

But you're right. Looking at various gambits online, there are one or two that are just cheap traps, and I just can't picture myself ever playing them. The gambits I play are reasonable openings, even against prepared opponents. I don't get quite enough compensation for the pawn by grandmaster standards, so the opening's considered "unsound". There are plenty of FM's who still play these gambits, even if no GM would ever touch them, so they can't be that terrible.

And I am studying endgames, though not as much as I'd like. It's not just a matter of trying to draw from a pawn down, though. I've gotten several draws and losses recently in endgames where I had more material going into the endgame. The endgame material I'm studying so far just covers really basic scenarios - Rook and pawn vs rook is good to know, but it doesn't help much with rook and 5 pawns vs rook and 4 pawn scenarios, with various pawn structures, etc. I'm just beginning to realize how much study it's really going to take to get good at the endgames that come up every day in my games.

--Fromper

If you are playing gambits your opponent shouldn't be surviving to make it to the ending.

Read a book like Practical Chess Endings by Keres. Play lots of speed chess against better opponents. Do analysis of positions with better players or just watch better players analyse a game.

Crash