@GentjanLici #28
I think it is time that I try to withdraw from this discussion :)
I don't get your logic there.
If opponents would not blunder in the opening and not in the middlegame and not in the endgame then all games would be drawn and we could go out to play tennis (Like Spassky and Ulf Andersson).
Well that's exactly my logic, even a beginner can save himself easily from blunders in the opening, but not so easily later on. Anyway this depends also on the kind of openings as previous people said, but I believe I shouldn't bother too much with this phase. Anyway goodnight.
Have you never watched one of TonyRo's games on YouTube? He wins almost all of them in the opening phase.
My $0.02:
It seems that there are a couple different meanings of "importance of openings" that the conversation has switched between, which might be part of the confusion.
On the one hand, it could mean the importance of studying the openings you play, whatever those might be.
On the other hand, it could mean the importance of your choice of particular opening.
The former I do think is helpful for almost every chess player. Knowing the typical tactics and plans for your opening makes you less likely to blunder and less likely to struggle to find a move when there are no tactics.
As a bonus, you get to play the opening more quickly than you otherwise would.
The second meaning, the importance of your choice of particular opening, I think is far less significant for nearly every player.
In chess, a given position is either won for the side to move with perfect play, drawn with perfect play, or losing for the side to move with perfect play.
If there's no win with perfect play, any talk of being better or having an advantage can only mean that the position is generally easier to play for one side.
Now, engine evaluations are an incredibly imperfect measure for this. Which is easier to play, a drawn position that the engine says is +0.6 but requires finding 15 consecutive difficult only moves for you while your opponent has several non-losing options at every turn, or another drawn position that the engine says is -0.6 but requires your opponent to find 15 consecutive difficult only moves while you have several non-losing options at every turn?
I'll take the latter any day.
Also, going back to the "generally" from "generally easier to play", a position that is "generally" hard to play for chess players can be a much better choice if you know it inside out compared to a position you've never seen before but is "generally" easier to play for others.
So, for me, it IS important to spend some time getting to understand the tactics and typical plans in whatever opening you play.
For me, however, it is NOT particularly important whether your chosen opening gives you -0.3 or +0.6 or whatever.
If it's not a forced loss, you enjoy the resulting positions, and you understand them well, that's what really matters.
That is true in classical chess, but is doubly true for faster time controls.
In blitz I've even played long stretches where I played nothing but the Damiano against 1.e4 and 2.Nf3, and despite that being either very nearly a forced loss or actually a forced loss, my results weren't all that much worse than normal.
Why? Because I've actually analyzed it and know how black puts up the most resistance, while most people just learn that it's really bad and white can play 3.Nxe5, 3.d4, or 3.Bc4 and be basically winning, and then don't think twice about it.
So long as it's not a forced loss, enjoying what you play and understanding the typical tactics and maneuvers is far more important than whatever numbers an engine might spit out for the resulting positions.
Cheers!
@OneOfTheQ #34
Interesting and funny that you mentioned the Damiano defense. That is one of the first openings that I learned about in chess as a teenager.
And there's this story that a guy, Robert McGregor, (not a weak player) in a simul played the Damiano defense on purpose against the famous GM Bobby Fischer, just to pretend he was a weak player. However, McGregor played the best reply Qe7, after which black is worse, but not completely lost immediately.
www.chess.com/blog/KingsBishop/damianos-defenseen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damiano_Defence#History @OneOfTheQ exactly, sometimes it's better to harm less critical aspects of chess like the opening in order to maximize improvement and ratings.
Many times it's a choice like: Study openings and be a lower rated player or study critical skills and be a strong player but with opening weaknesses.
Nobody improved his rating more than 50 points by learning opening theory, it's just a waste of time.
@GentjanLici #36
The stronger a chessplayer gets in either otb and/or online chess, the more you will see that opening preparation grows in importance and will actually give you rating gain.
Here is a game by you (from your best rated classical wins), which shows that both you and your opponent were not on par in this opening line :
en.lichess.org/OwOwxiZ7#95.Nd4-b3 is giving up any opening advantage for white.
The only move to try to get an opening advantage is 5.Nb5!
After 5.Nd4-b3 black has basically already equalized, and should play Nf6! (attacking e4 pawn and developing a piece) and after the natural Nc3 defending the e4 pawn, Bb4! followed by d7d5!
Your opponent played the somewhat weaker d7d6 instead.
(How do I know this ? Because I played these lines with black, and I spend some time on it, and learned from forum posts.)
Here another example about opening knowledge.
A classic game by the famous Siegbert Tarrasch :
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1283366A very fresh game (July 2016) where the GM with white won in a very similar way :
en.lichess.org/MsGqPRn8 I don't think that studying openings neccessarily means you have less time to spend on other aspects of the game. In fact, you can combine it very well with learning about middlegame strategy.
By studying a variety of openings (not just those ones you play), you will see a lot of good examples of various strategic concepts like backward pawns, isolated queen's pawn positions, positions with a blocked center, opposite sides castling, creating and exploiting a lead in development, typical imbalances like bishop pair vs better pawn structure and many others.
You will also get a feeling for how grandmasters judge these kind of imbalances as you see in which cases they're willing to take on for example pawn weaknesses in exchange for maybe the bishop pair or general piece activity and in which cases they are not.
This kind of "general" opening study is at least how I learned about a lot of middlegame ideas.
If, however, opening study for you just means memorizing moves, then you'll of course not learn much else from doing that and you'll indeed do better spending your time on other aspects of the game.
In that case, you need to be aware of your lack of opening knowledge though, and spend a little more time on your moves in the opening phase of a game. If you just quickly play random developing moves while your opponent exactly knows what he's doing, you may soon get a strategically lost position out of the opening and then you have to rely on cheap tricks to get back in the game.
I play the same opponents OTB everyday, they usually fall for opening traps in the first few games then they find a boring defense and they stick to it, they never blunder again.
The openings aren't helping me too much with them, I change the opening every week in order to avoid their boring and drawish defenses, but they learn the traps and ideas too quickly and find a boring defense everytime. I think the middlegame would help us more.
Typical situations and corresponding plans in the middlegame help a bit, but sometimes I make big blunders if I follow this patterns, so I try to find new ideas on my own, at least I be more accurate tactically this way.
i am so bad at openings (just saying) trying to learn it but... someone help with easier way.
