Quote:
Originally Posted by Shady Bill
For example; if in the opening, you always make every move about controlling the center, you will do okay in the opening. That is a much easier concept than to learn dozens of openings.
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Thats why there are those dozens of openings - because the enemy will not let you carelessly do that and will try to spoil it for you, like I tried to spoil it for you with choosing the Pirc (it often comes as an unwelcomed surprise for White) and you tried to spoil the Pirc for me. Each of us tried to enforce his will on the other.
Thats why there are dozens of openings. Now, it seems I have more background knowledge about Pirc Defence than you have. Thats why I nevertheless was able to navigate the uncharted water you pushed us into with 3.f3, I simply stuck to my underdstanding of Black's key strategemes and saw to what degree I could still use them. You did not have that knowledge apparently, and thus started early to make mistakes (c3 already got you on slippery slopes, I think), not directly loosing material, but loosing tempi and positional value, strategic options. See the difference...? Players ideally should have a base understanding of ANY opening there is - so to have at least some base to stand on, some safe ground to fall back to if the going of the fight pushes them onto terrain that they would have avoided if they would have had the choice. Then finding an escape from the mess by simplifying material on equal terms - thats an exit strategy from there, for exmaple.
Chess players need both: a general understanding of general strategemes, AND the tools of the trade.
Beginners make a mistake however, they try to blindly memorize an opening and think then they are well off for the start. But what when the opening ends: either the sequence of memorized moves has come to its end, or the opponent leaves the variation early? If the player then has no idea of the basic conception of the opening in question,
why it does the moves that it does, he is like a parachuter who landed in the middle of a minefield at night, with new moon and overcast sky.
You need always both: the memorized stuff as well as an understanding of the Why and What-for of this stuff. There is no way for the one without the other.
What you can dom and what i did back then, is to tailor your repertoire that way that with only a few openings you can cover a huge, wide terrain in the variation tree, or you collect openigns that you cna enforce, with Black or White, after e4 or d4, or you choose a library of openings that are familiar, can slide from one variation into the other. For exmaple, the Pirc was part of my repertoire back then, but I also played with Black much classic and Modern Benoni, Grünfeld-Indian and Nimzo-Indian. It can happen that many of their variations begin in the one opening and then lead into one of the others, and they share many motives, and cause much of the same kind of problems for the opponent.
One can also avoid openings that are old and well-analyed and played to death, becasue they come not with books but
librariers of books about them. Ruy Lopez or Sicilian. Ruy Lopez I NEVER played, I never was interested in sitting down and studying chess on one day, and just Ruy Lopez on another. Sicilian Defence I sometimes play, with White also its mirrored version, the English Opening, but I struck with a few aggressive variations that Black mostly can more or less enforce (or so I thought...), to avoid most of the variation tree.
One needs both: basic understanding of the basic motives and strategemes, AND the toolbox of the trade.
And then a good calculation skill and a very good memory, and visualization ability. The first I still can do if taking the time, the latter is a problem. Its a simple human fact that with 55 you do not learn new stuff or memorize things as easy anymore as you do with 20. All life is evidence for that. Thats why I took notes during the match, so that I would not mix up sequences of moves between three, four variations I had on mind. At table chess of course that is not possible. Thats why I stick to CC these days when playing humans. It maximises my strengths and minimises my vulnerabilities and compensates for my memory. And yes, if playing humans, I absolutely play to win, not just for playing. Just playing I do with computers, and do not care much about the outcome.
One thing is certain, however. chess is a wonderful game and really the king of games. I know Go (by rules, not more) Backgammon (playing it reasonable, but not more than that), Abalone as well, and like especially Abalone very much (but suck at it), Checkers (which i always found boring and today is a fully calculated game: computers have databased every possible match). I also would like to play Skat, but always forget that I have a - reasonably good - app for it, and card games and computers: that simply feels too weired even for my taste. Go has an even higher number of possible ways how a match can run than chess, but it is less attractive to me since it lacks the moving dynamics that chess has. Its a totally different way of thinking, and it doe snot tic my boxes. By looks, however, the pieces on the board - it is fascinating. I also checked chinese chess when I was a schoolboy, but never got into it. So, backgammon and Abalone would be my choices beside chess. But chess thrones above all the others.
Abalone has a notation system, too. I just don'T know it, but it should be possible to play it via mail. I know no theory at all about Abalone, dont even know wether there are theory books or it is all passed down from mouth to ear between players. But boy, does that board and pieces look awesome!