Marshall Weekly U1600 90+30 - Round 1
Openings matter.
This week I started another 6-round weekly 90+30 tournament at Marshall, playing in the U1600 section. I last played in the July 19 - Aug 23. This starts a series running Oct 11 - Nov 15.
Again I faced Dimitriy Guller in the first round, and again I lost - in the same way.
- I played "quirky" opening moves instead of solid main-lines.
- I didn't exchange pawns in the center and open up the game - which is what I had planned, but didn't follow through on.
- I didn't keep my king safe
- I played the French but didn't play the f6 pawn break.
As a result, I was - again - losing the entire game and got crushed by a pawn storm.
In my previous game with Muller, he had played the Vienna, so I opted for the French because I have been playing it recently (with some success... against weaker opponents), and I wanted to have a different game.
After my own analysis (limited - there wasn't much to review after the opening except that "yup, I was losing the entire game") I turned on the engine and was surprised to find that White had actually blundered late in the game. I had drawing chances! However I think it was a line only an engine could find - let me know what you think:
The Game
Time for another rant: Yes, Openings Matter
As a Chess beginner, you will often hear: "openings don't matter" (mostly from chesscom players who never have played slow OTB classical games). Please understand what they mean by this: memorizing openings is not enough. You have to think for yourself!
But here's the reality I'm experiencing (and hearing from strong players I've met who don't just have a "chesscom blitz" rating):
Overall, in the game of chess: openings matter! If you play the French Defense and your opponent plays the Tarrasch variation... FFS you should know the most common replies up to move 4. You should know that if you play the French that you need to play c5 at some point, and then look for a f6 pawn break. This isn't about memorizing critical positions or the "tabia." The opening mainlines are the best moves proven by generations of human blood and sweat. You will find them on your own the hard way. So ,why handicap yourself by deliberately ignoring opening lines? At least to move 5 or 6 of whatever you play? I don't understand why this is controversial.
I didn't know the moves for the Tarrasch, and I played some moves that were not mainline but seemed "reasonable" - and got crushed.
In IM Yuriy Krykun's fantastic Chessable course "Short & Sweet: Krykun's Italian Game" he starts by saying "let's learn why the main lines are the main lines and why sidelines are sidelines." He then proceeds to illustrate why Black playing moves like 3. ...h6 are quickly punished.
If someone were playing Black against the Italian and asked you for the best move after 3. Bc4 - would you tell them "play h6, it's fine - openings don't matter?" Please, explain your reasoning if so.
AlphaZero Agrees by the Way
When AlphaZero famously learned to play chess by playing itself millions of games - it ended up re-inventing the most popular standard openings:
"We analysed the chess knowledge discovered by AlphaZero. Table 2 analyses the
most common human openings (those played more than 100,000 times in an online database
of human chess games (1)). Each of these openings is independently discovered and played
frequently by AlphaZero during self-play training."
Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf
That's all for now.
