Opening ideas for black?

Most likely with the no tolerance rule on being late to the board, both players had to prove they were there before drawing.

Originally posted by nimzo5
Looking at the Rowson game briefly, I noticed that on move 17 Black moves his f rook instead of his a rook - which just tells me at that point he was out of book whereas Rowson continued to crank out his lines for many more moves. If you are playing the Blackside of the Dragon you had better be more booked up...

And Rowson outrated his opponent by 200 points. NO opening is worth 200 points, especially when we're talking the difference between 2300 and 2500 rather than 1300 and 1500.

Originally posted by Paul Leggett
And Rowson outrated his opponent by 200 points. NO opening is worth 200 points, especially when we're talking the difference between 2300 and 2500 rather than 1300 and 1500.

ok, now that i have shown what i would play against the dragon and why (whites
strategy allows him to take advantage of his strategic pluses, minimise the scope of
the dragon bishop, render the c file useless, etc etc ) what are your suggestions of
playing against it and why? I know Paul favours the Alapin, although its repudiated to
lead to nothing but equality, i suggest anything which renders d5 out of the question
, therfore Bc4 seems good to go, although i know nothing of it. It seems just off the
top of my head to be Sozin like, where white shall play f4-f5 and try to open lines or to
get black to make concessions in the centre, for example ...e5, rendering the d5
square weak.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
ok, now that i have shown what i would play against the dragon and why (whites
strategy allows him to take advantage of his strategic pluses, minimise the scope of
the dragon bishop, render the c file useless, etc etc ) what are your suggestions of
playing against it and why? I know Paul favours the Alapin, although its repudiated to
lead to ...[text shortened]... get black to make concessions in the centre, for example ...e5, rendering the d5
square weak.

well mainline dragon of course. learn the theory, face it head on, get the most that there is to get.

but if that's not an option, alapin is the biggest single key in the chess openings I believe. know its theory well, and it'll take a lot of effort from black to not drop from book first. make the very reasonable bet that your opponent is lazier than you.

that said, I've yet to face an alapin player who knew his stuff. usually it's been relatively easy to keep up in the opening. of course the world is filled with alapin nutters who could get an opening advantage against me with one hand behind their back, but in practice it seems to be surprisingly rare. (a stark contrast to white dragon players there, who tend to know theory relatively well in comparison.)

an easy, simple to play, aggressive opening with little theory? it doesn't exist. sometimes I wonder why 1.e4 player bother with the HUGE required mass of theory on all the possible black answers. - it's one thing to book up on massive dragon theory from black side, and a whole another thing to learn that AND all other sicilians. and even then you've only prepared for ONE single black 1st move! that's just crazy. 🙂

Originally posted by nimzo5
I wouldn't fall into playing the 1... b6 d6 or g6 type openings to cut down the workload. It's better (imo) to stick to 1.e4 e5 and 1.d4 d5 and build yourself up from that. Specifically-


1.e4 e5 nf3 nc6 and if a Ruy Lopez than play the open variation if given the chance
vs 3. Bc4 Italian game play Bc5
vs 4 knights play Bb4.
vs the King's Gambit take uff ala b3 focus on a strong center with e5 etc. and good opening principles should be fine.

If you play the Tarrasch, you don't need to learn a separate opening against the English (or anything else but 1.e4 for that matter). That's one of the biggest advantages of the Tarrasch. You answer c4 with e6 and just adopt a Tarrsch formation after that with d5, c5, Nc6 and so on. If white wants to play for anything other than equality he's forced to transpose to the Queen's gambit with d4 at some point.

In a lot of cases, If white insists on deviating from the Queen's gambit, following that pattern will lead to main lines in whatever the opening is. Like for example, in the Colle:



Black is fully equal and hasn't had to spend a single second learning any Colle theory. I remember a quote (from Fine- I think) that if (I'm paraphrasing) black can get in c5 (with d5) and white doesn't play c4 (with d4) then black is at least equal. All of my experience with this opening tells me that's true. I can't think of a single exception.

Originally posted by wormwood
well mainline dragon of course. learn the theory, face it head on, get the most that there is to get.

but if that's not an option, alapin is the biggest single key in the chess openings I believe. know its theory well, and it'll take a lot of effort from black to not drop from book first. make the very reasonable bet that your opponent is lazier than you ...[text shortened]... and even then you've only prepared for ONE single black 1st move! that's just crazy. 🙂

WW- Almost all club players seem to use the Alapin as their fallback choice if they get a Sicilian they aren't prepared for. This is especially true vs the Dragon and Acc. Dragon. where the theory doesn't relate to other Open Sicilians.
As one Alapin player said to me once, why should I bother to learn all the Dragon and Maroczy Bind theory when I can just play an Alapin...

I don't worry too much about massive theory, occasionally you get caught out in some booked line, but most of the time, if you have some experience you can find good moves in the opening on your own and reach a decent middlegame. The key is to know which openings you HAVE to know your theory- like the Dragon and the Najdorf- openings where the "sensible" move can have immediate dire consequences.

Originally posted by wormwood
well mainline dragon of course. learn the theory, face it head on, get the most that there is to get.

but if that's not an option, alapin is the biggest single key in the chess openings I believe. know its theory well, and it'll take a lot of effort from black to not drop from book first. make the very reasonable bet that your opponent is lazier than you ...[text shortened]... and even then you've only prepared for ONE single black 1st move! that's just crazy. 🙂

I wonder why 1.e4 player bother with the HUGE required mass of theory on all the
possible black answers

this is the real thing, for its almost impossible to learn. The alternative which i think
could work in theory is to play as Soltis suggests in his pawn structure chess, that is to
know the pawn families and play as per the pawn structure dictates, knowing the
structures strengths and weaknesses or you can try to play openings which have
minimal theory, the bishops opening cuts out all the Lopez and Petroff and Latvian
stuff, the KIA cuts out all the French stuff, the 150 attack against the pirc and modern
etc etc.

Pick good mainline openings and stick to them and you will gradual absorb the theory you need to play a decent game of chess. Worst thing you can do is keep switching around looking for some quick fix.

All this fear of 1.e4 theory is a bit silly since unless you are playing very strong players they won't know more than little pieces better than you do.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I wonder why 1.e4 player bother with the HUGE required mass of theory on all the
possible black answers

this is the real thing, for its almost impossible to learn. The alternative which i think
could work in theory is to play as Soltis suggests in his pawn structure chess, that is to
know the pawn families and play as per the pawn structure ...[text shortened]... ff, the KIA cuts out all the French stuff, the 150 attack against the pirc and modern
etc etc.

that's one long ass sentence! 😀

Originally posted by nimzo5
Pick good mainline openings and stick to them and you will gradual absorb the theory you need to play a decent game of chess. Worst thing you can do is keep switching around looking for some quick fix.

All this fear of 1.e4 theory is a bit silly since unless you are playing very strong players they won't know more than little pieces better than you do.

How this is practically possible, for example, you need to learn at least six mainline
Sicilians, al least six mainline Lopez not to mention the Latvian and ....f5 Lopez, i
forget its name, plus a line for the Petroff, and the Caro Khan, and the French, and the
Pirc/Modern, and the Alekhine. That eighteen already, gulp!

Originally posted by wormwood
that's one long ass sentence! 😀

its Glaswegian and is actually just one long ass word 🙂

Originally posted by nimzo5
Pick good mainline openings and stick to them and you will gradual absorb the theory you need to play a decent game of chess. Worst thing you can do is keep switching around looking for some quick fix.

All this fear of 1.e4 theory is a bit silly since unless you are playing very strong players they won't know more than little pieces better than you do.

well I didn't think there was any fear in it. just that on one hand you have all that to deal with, and on the other hand you could play 1.f4 and get 'your opening' every single game.

but sure, opening advantage counts only for so much, and we're all so lacking at everything else in reality, that it hardly is a big problem. especially as so few of us will have that 'complete' opening knowledge in our toolbox anyway.

WW- I agree. You can play some pet opening and maybe that skips you through the ranks a bit, but at some point you will hit a wall that way. Either your system will not give you enough winning chances, or your opponents will all know your pet opening choice and have their own homemade refutation prepared. Either way you will be on the decline, trying to grasp at new openings, new middlegames and quite possibly new endgames that you weren't exposed to on your way up.

I decided when I started that I would go the long term route, playing a broad set of openings, no system play and be willing to take on my opponents best "serve". It certainly held back my rating for awhile, but now a couple years later, I am glad I did it.

Originally posted by savage4731
...

Like for example, in the Colle:

Black is fully equal and hasn't had to spend a single second learning any Colle theory. I remember a quote (from Fine- I think) that if (I'm paraphrasing) black can get in c5 (with d5) and white doesn't play c4 (with d4) then black is at least equal. All of my experience with this opening tells me that's true. I can't think of a single exception.

thank you! it took until page 5 of this thread until the colle was mentioned. and robbie didnt even answer to that...are you feeling not well? am getting worried...

Originally posted by nimzo5
WW- I agree. You can play some pet opening and maybe that skips you through the ranks a bit, but at some point you will hit a wall that way. Either your system will not give you enough winning chances, or your opponents will all know your pet opening choice and have their own homemade refutation prepared. Either way you will be on the decline, trying to grasp t certainly held back my rating for awhile, but now a couple years later, I am glad I did it.

I don't think it's very likely my opponents can 'prepare' for my pet opening, as you can't really avoid it. no matter what they try, I'll always be the one more familiar with the structures. (assuming roughly equal opponents of course.) to surprise me in any statistically meaningful regularity, they'd need to work on it MORE than my total body of work over the years. in which case they'd deserve the advantage.

my longer time plan is to master one set of openings, to a reasonable level, then pick new ones and work them for some years. then change again. most likely very different kind of openings than I'm doing now. so kinda the same idea, getting exposed to different structures, but in chunks instead of all at once.

now I'm doing hypermodern fianchetto stuff, and next probly classical centre openings. as now I feel very comfortable in fianchetto openings, but the qgd type of central pawn structures baffle me, so I'll go do them next. the reason why I first turned to fianchettos was exactly the same. I felt completely confused in them, so I thought I'd play them exclusively until I understood them. it worked.