Just a few things.

The thread started out one way, and has gone another, but it's a good development, so no biggie. Lots of passionate opinions, usually well-supported. It's all good.

Chess Fan, the excerpt you quoted was originally by me, not Fired.

About this ICC thing: what do you ninjas think? Is looking at the book during online games cheating or not? Whether it is cheating or not, is it a good development at ICC? Whaddya think? I think it stinks, but then you guys know I'm a reactionary Nazi who wants to take over the world and make Europeans wear handguns and drawl like Texas cowboys (just ask RB)!

I think Greco probably invented most, possibly all of the games in his book, for training purposes. But only he knew for sure.

DeepNf3, you've made some good points, but you're kinda pushing the pro-openings thing into the ground. As many have said (me, Akselborg, others), the key is balance. Capa said that you've got to be equally strong in all stages of the game.

I notice where Ed mentioned he got to play IM Rashid Ziyatdinov (not trying to differ with your spelling, Ed, just going with what's printed on the book).

In view of all this talk about openings, let's see what two strong masters have to say about the openings; the book (written with NM Peter Dyson) is GM-RAM Essential Grandmaster Chess Knowledge:

"There is a vicious cycle to the study of openings--once a player begins to study and play standard theoretical lines, he will find that there are opponents that know these lines a little deeper. Thus the player must invest even more time in study of the openings. This cycle continues as a player improves and as the strength and theoretical knowledge of his opponents increases. The time thus spent in study and rote memorization of opening theory eventually erodes the time spent in improving one's fundamental chess knowledge, which can lead to a plateau effect in the playing strength of the player.
While it is impossible for the serious player to completely avoid this paradox, it is possible to combine some basic principles with a repertoire structured to keep the amount of theory which must be known to a manageable level. The logical nature of chess extends to the opening. The basic principles of the opening have been known a long time, and they are still good today. If you follow these principles, the logic of chess dictates that you will not get a bad position."

I think the key part here is "a repertoire structured to keep the amount of theory which must be known to a manageable level." In that sense, acquisition of a repertoire is not primarily intended to give the chessplayer such an edge that he wins substantial amounts of games in the opening due to superior knowledge, but is intended to give him reasonable positions from which he can deploy his chess skills--his middlegame ability and end game ability, which will be the key to winning and losing the majority of his games.

A bit further on comes this:

"Perhaps the most valuable advice about studying openings is this: study the theory of an opening only after playing it. The point is that by playing the opening, you will gain first hand experience in analyzing the types of positions that can arise. This experience will give rise to questions about the opening in terms of what to do in certain positions that occurred, or might have occurred, in a real game situation. At this point, it is appropriate to study the theory of the opening, as any knowledge gained is in direct response to practical questions, and is more likely to be retained due to this association. On the other hand, attempting to learn an opening by studying useless theory before playing the opening will result in a lot of useless work. Later, when faced with the opening over the board, it is likely you will either forget the theory, or perhaps worse, will get the lines or move orders mixed up."

Morphy was the best-read player of his day, but when faced three times by Anderssen's 1 a3!?, he could do no better than to extract one win. Fischer spent years playing the Poisoned Pawn Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian, and was the leading exponent of that variation, yet when he played for the world championship against Spassky, he only played it twice in 21 games--and drew and lost.

Openings are important; chess is so difficult a game that almost nothing in it is not important. But opening knowledge alone is not enough, and too much time spent on opening study, especially the rote memorization of arid strings of moves, will damage a chessplayer's game, not improve it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration?"--Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction

In my opinion, it IS cheating!

I agree, I think that it stinks.


Chess Fan

If you want to get the maximum of these feature of the French I recommend that you play the Classical or the MacCutcheon variations instead of the Winawer. The theory of the Winawer is as complex and difficult as the Najdorf, and just as changeable.

Quote:

I heard that if White goes for the exchange then he's aiming for a drawish position. Is this true, Fired? Ed?

Not always. The big advantage of the Exchange, from White's perspective, is that move orders are almost completely irrelevant. It isn't possible to sit down and swot up a twenty move variation of the Exchange and then just play it from memory.

Ed Yetman, III
YetmanBrothers.com

Hi FBX,

I got a chance to interview Korchnoi at the U.S. Open in 1983. He opined that the Advance French was slightly better, theoretically, for Black, and I tend to agree. Black needs one move, 3...P-QB4, to attack the base of the White pawn chain, while White needs something like six moves to play P-KB5.

The best way to learn how to play against the Exchange French is to get Nimzowitsch's Chess Praxis and read the section "Asymmetrical treatment of symmetrical openings." All the games are Exchange Frenchs, and the notes will teach you more about the Exchange than just about any other, Watson included.

Ed Yetman, III
YetmanBrothers.com

Originally posted by Combo_Kid

Openings are important; chess is so difficult a game that almost nothing in it is not important. But opening knowledge alone is not enough, and too much time spent on opening study, especially the rote memorization of arid strings of moves, will damage a chessplayer's game, not improve it.
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Opening Knowledge alone? there is no such a thing as Opening Knowledge alone (when done the right way)

if i take a pieces of paper and tell my son: " I am going to write three names and related sentences(list could be much longer i am only using three) here and then show them to you for three seconds after that i want you to recall them and tell me what they were" then i take the Piece of paper and write

1.Albert---- baseball is good
2.BoB---- walks like your uncle
3.Carlos----- speaks spanish

I may be able to get him to better results on task better than if i wrote

5.Lyla---- My car is blue
3.liusmila---- Boxes like mike tyson
6.Democritos---- She is so stupid

As you can see the first list of names not only is written in numerical order they are also in alphabetical order and are more familiar names, this is exactely like getting every knowledge you need from the study and perfectioning of an opening repertoir, because strategic,tactics,pawnstructure etc etc are contained within it and the only thing left to do would be independent endgames study

this is the reason why Sergey Karjakin became GM at the age of 12, he was born in 1990 check his games at chessgames and you will see

Note: and i didn't even mention the fact that the "sentenses on list one relate better to the given names

Note: of course i can always take somebody and teach them how to relate moves on the board to names like ruis Lopez, italian opening, king's india defense etc etc...., but that for sure is not what i am talking about here and it is obviously not what put Negi and Karjakin among the bests, and here is an example:

when i analized this game in the computer i could not believe what came out of it, i had to force the computer to find a wait to refute this variation from black perspective because the computer went so confused it didn't even know what was going on, it is obvious to me that Negi took this variation back and forth with his computer to many critical points and probably no even his trainer knew about it

[Event "Corus Group C"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2007.01.13"]
[EventDate "2007.01.13"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Parimarjan Negi"]
[Black "Wouter Spoelman"]
[ECO "C78"]
[WhiteElo "2538"]
[BlackElo "2414"]
[PlyCount "53"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O b5 6. Bb3 Bb7
7. Re1 Bc5 8. c3 O-O 9. d4 Bb6 10. Be3 exd4 11. cxd4 Na5
12. Bg5 Nxb3 13. Qxb3 h6 14. Bh4 g5 15. Nxg5 Nxe4 16. Rxe4
Bxe4 17. Qg3 hxg5 18. Bxg5 Qe8 19. Bf6+ Bg6 20. Nc3 Qe6
21. Qh4 Bh7 22. Qg5+ Bg6 23. Nd5 Bxd4 24. Bxd4 c5 25. Nf6+ Kg7
26. Ne8+ Kg8 27. Qh6 1-0 (the main problem with this game is that the computer thinks is winning with 16..Bxe4 and then after 17.Qg3 it completely changes "its opinion" , so i had to go back and find something a couple of move before that mess happened, now i don't have time to find my annotations on this game but maybe later i will)..ok i remember now the problem was 12..Nxb3 instead he should ve played 12...h6 and then following up with g5 was no problem..still complicated for black but he could ve gotten away with it after some sharp lines

this was another game that gave me a headache me been a scotch game and gambit player myself

[Event "Sudak UKR"]
[Site "It"]
[Date "2002.08.07"]
[EventDate "2002.08.02"]
[Round "7"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Sergey Karjakin"]
[Black "V B Malinin"]
[ECO "C45"]
[WhiteElo "2523"]
[BlackElo "2434"]
[PlyCount "39"]

1. e4 Nc6 2. d4 e5 3. Nf3 exd4 4. Nxd4 Qh4 5. Nc3 Bb4 6. Be2
Nf6 7. O-O Bxc3 8. Nf5 Qxe4 9. Bd3 Qg4 10. f3 Qa4 11. bxc3 O-O
12. Nxg7 Kxg7 13. Bh6+ Kxh6 14. Qd2+ Kh5 15. g4+ Nxg4
16. fxg4+ Qxg4+ 17. Kh1 d6 18. Rf6 Qg5 19. Be2+ Bg4 20. Bxg4+
1-0

keep in mind that he is only 12 years old at this point, my conclusion to this was that this 12 years old's favorite toy was to play with this variation in his computer

Hi Ed,

To be honest I'm not convinced that black is at all better in the Advance French, from what I've seen a lot of lines give white a small but lasting edge. I confess I don't know a massive amount of theory on this opening, would you be able to elaborate a little on which lines give black an edge?

Ken,

A lot of players do use the Exchange variation to try and play for a draw but don't let this fool you. It should just lead to equality from the opening but this doesn't mean a draw, there are no rules against playing for a win from an equal position. You have to be careful and don't be lulled into a false sense of security, there's still a lot of play left.

I haven't played on ICC for a while and if this is the case I certainly won't be going back.

Its just that the advance variation tends to give black a very concrete way of countering white's center. I've also seen a lot of IMs and GMs claim that 3. Nc3 is white's most critical line against the french, giving black "the most difficulty in trying to reach equality".

As for the ICC book thing, I dont like that. If they want to do that, it should be for friendly games only. Rated games need to stay clean.

Ed, I played the Winawer once in a correspondence game and although I eventually won in a rook-pawn ending I decided I didn't want to play that opening again. Is Chess Praxis still available? I tried to buy it about 3 years ago along with other chess books and it was the only book they finally admitted they didn't have even though it was advertised on their website.

That's a good way of looking at it. I was starting to get that false sense of security as well as figuring "this is a draw" and then only playing for a draw instead of pushing for a win (it's not like either my opponent or myself (grammar?) are playing top level chess here).

FirebrandX, just off the top of your head, do you know which lines are now considered bad? If not, please don't trouble yourself looking it up as in a few months I hope to have Watson's book(s) on the French and I'm sure I'll come across it in there.

Yeah, I think there are other lines that give Black more problems. They're just a bit theory heavy for me. OK, this thread has been hijacked a bit... umm, tactics, tactics, tactics!

Hi Ken,

I think that's a pretty common problem. People tend to look at the position and say 'this is a French exchange so it's boring' or 'this is a Dragon so I must attack'. Although these thoughts do remind us of roughly what we should be doing, it's easy to focus too much on them. I think it's a better idea to think 'this is a chess position so I have to find the best move'.