Disparity between White and Black
13 Feb '12 04:421 editI've been trying to improve off my mid 1800 USCF plateau (down from 1950 two years ago) for a while, but my play has been really inconsistent--sometimes really strong play, and other times horrendously weak. I dug a little deeper and noticed that it seems like my play with black is awful-- in the last three OTB tournaments I played, my record against similarly rated opponents has been 1/5 with black, and 3/3 with White. On RHP, I've played about an equal number of games with white and black, and I'm scoring 58% with white vs 45% with black.
After looking into some of my OTB games, I believe the reason for such a large disparity has been the psychological effect of openings. With white, even if I forget an opening or my opponent takes me out of my knowledge, having the first move generally allows me to steer the position into one that I'm comfortable with, even if the opening is unknown. With black, however, that comfort isn't there, and in many of my games the psychological pressure of being in an uncomfortable (though not necessarily bad) position and taken out of book has caused me to make some terrible positional mistakes and occasionally outright tactical blunders, or in the best case get way behind in time.
The conclusion from this is that, first, I should forget about studying any openings as white and devote whatever time I was allotting to studying openings to specifically studying openings as black. Second, I need to make sure I don't psychologically collapse when I get in an unfamiliar opening (I'm not sure how to go about doing this, but at least I've identified the problem).
It's weird, but I didn't actually realize this until I randomly saw a forum post online that mentioned prioritizing working on improving your score as black. Has anyone else noticed a disproportionate difference between playing performance with white and black? Below IM/GM level there really shouldn't be much of a difference.
After looking into some of my OTB games, I believe the reason for such a large disparity has been the psychological effect of openings. With white, even if I forget an opening or my opponent takes me out of my knowledge, having the first move generally allows me to steer the position into one that I'm comfortable with, even if the opening is unknown. With black, however, that comfort isn't there, and in many of my games the psychological pressure of being in an uncomfortable (though not necessarily bad) position and taken out of book has caused me to make some terrible positional mistakes and occasionally outright tactical blunders, or in the best case get way behind in time.
The conclusion from this is that, first, I should forget about studying any openings as white and devote whatever time I was allotting to studying openings to specifically studying openings as black. Second, I need to make sure I don't psychologically collapse when I get in an unfamiliar opening (I'm not sure how to go about doing this, but at least I've identified the problem).
It's weird, but I didn't actually realize this until I randomly saw a forum post online that mentioned prioritizing working on improving your score as black. Has anyone else noticed a disproportionate difference between playing performance with white and black? Below IM/GM level there really shouldn't be much of a difference.
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