I'm curious to know what methods people use to study openings. Do you?
* study one at a time?
* study a wide range, or makybe a certain set of similar ones?
* study the MCO? study books with more dialog?
* play blitz to learn them?
* play standard chess to learn them?
* stick to one for a long period of time?
* play and be punished to learn them? 🙂
* study the MCO - Study books with more dialog (I do both)
* stick to one for a long period of time (and learn as many variations as possible within that one opening)
* play and be punished to learn them
One other thing I do is to try and steer games into openings I'm familiar with. Sometimes through transposition, and sometimes through forcing moves if they're available. That helps me in the game and it helps me learn a new move order to get me into an opening I'm familiar with.
* study one at a time?all of the above!! blitz is a good way to practice different lines of an opening you are interested in, but the play is not likely to be accurate enough to really learn. hitting the books is also important, but any game that has been studied thoroughly enough to end up annotated and published in a book, an opponent is likely to know how to beat. the best thing is to understand opening principles...one book on theory is worth 10 books of annotated games. i reccomend yasser seraweins "winning chess" series and some classics such as reti's "modern ideas in chess" and nimzovitch's "my system"
* study a wide range, or makybe a certain set of similar ones?
* study the MCO? study books with more dialog?
* play blitz to learn them?
* play standard chess to learn them?
* stick to one for a long period of time?
* play and be punished to learn them? 🙂[/b]
i think their are two very diffferent stages to playing openings....
1/ memorising grandmaster inspired "perfect" moves,
2/ understanding the ideas and traps associated with your favourite openings.
both of these require you to be especially faithful to your chosen openings - playing them over and over and over;
and also take a vague interest in the ideas of all other openings.
Originally posted by ZaBlancAll of those sound like worthwhile methods.
I'm curious to know what methods people use to study openings. Do you?
* study one at a time?
* study a wide range, or makybe a certain set of similar ones?
* study the MCO? study books with more dialog?
* play blitz to learn them? ...[text shortened]... r a long period of time?
* play and be punished to learn them? 🙂
The following is what I have read about how to study openings.
Pick one at a time. Choose an opening that you feel comfortable with; any one where you feel the main moves involved or the main plan(s) of attack fit your own game. Pick an opening where the moves as explained make sense to you.
Then play through several games with this opening (use www.chessgames.com or some book or whatever). I read to go through at least 12 but better to go through mebbe 100. That way you'll familiarise yourself with how things tend to work out.
Sometimes, for example, you'll see patterns where players move knights off to the side of the board or make pawn moves that you don't really understand. These kind of moves will become more familiar to you as you see them in more games, and you'll get a sense of them.
Apparently, this is a good way to study and understand openings rather than just to learn them. After you've worked on one, move on to another. Soon enough, you'll have mastered them all, and can take over the world....
Ahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!
I haven't quite put that last part into practice yet....
cheers...
Here's one method, the simplest: Pick an opening, something really solid and play lots of blitz with it. If you get crunched in the opening. find that one opening move you made you shouldn't have. Look in the books or master games to find the best move in that position. Then go back and play that opening again using this better move. Pretty quickly this will enable you to get into the middle game with a reasonable position. You can't expect memorizing opening lines will win right away against anybody but morons. Hope this "one move" opening strategy helps.