Originally posted by greenpawn34
Hi
I totally despair about posts on openings. Any opening.
Usually I ignore them and let them have their fun.
This one I jumped in because it's sharp enough to be interesting and there
are quick kills and tactcial shots a plenty and I spotted an intersting Rook sac.
I wanted to keep the discussion at our level and mentioned the Tebb game
(I have a right stinking hangover.)
Game 1891607
The dead Greek enters again with no intention to fuel the fire. No GM games on this one (please allow me the use of just one FEN). My honest hope is to demonstrate that all of us are walking towards the same direction. In fact I think that we are also standing on the same side of the road.
Personally I do not post often. In RHP there were (and still are) some more experienced and more adequate players than me who are willing to share their great experience and help us all (GP, David Tebb, Heinz, FL, Gatecrasher, Korch to name just a few of the invaluable assets and some terrible losses of this site) . Out of respect and due to my concrete belief that says “whenever I am not sure that I have something good to write its better not to write it” I stay silent. The majority of the users here are in need of solid truths rather than endless debates.
I do not like threads about openings either. You cannot learn from them. That’s why books are published. I admit that everyone including me may get intrigued from something he reads but then my advice is “Go buy the book or search for articles, something published, do your homework anyway”. I do not object to chess chit chat though whatever the reason might be. And sometimes there are some pretty interesting opening discussions that are a good start to trigger a research.
I do not like “just playing” games from a PGN either. I look at them in order to spot something unusual or something that may grasp me and make me study them. Even if the outcome is pretty irrelevant, a pattern, an idea, a plan may find its way to my brain cells. But they are not telling the whole truth. They do not say whether X player was in time trouble, was in great need of a toilet, whether the lady/husband gave him/her a hard time the day before the game was played bla bla bla and I am confident that I can not spot the good moves or the blunders in short time. In fact they are not telling anything about every possible OTB aspect that affects the quality of play. Annotations from a seasoned player do though. I think they are more helpful to insert to our minds the good and the no no, the plans and the inaccuracies. And I try to follow every annotated game that falls to my attention.
I don’t even pretend that I try to comprehend GM games (alright beetle. Shoot). For every game that says this, everybody can find another game that says that. I believe this is fruitless. I agree with GP when he says “you cannot evaluate that a variation is good because something is happening 45 moves after” (alright beetle. Shoot twice). GP is right. The dogma “Every endgame begins from the opening” does not apply “a priori” to us amateurs. It is something good to remember though as a principle in order to achieve progress. I remember now (and I hope Robbie can verify) that in our private mails my exact words were “don’t try to evaluate an opening because of an endgame” (ok beetle right now I know you need a machine gun to shoot me). But I agree with the beetle also. We must try to learn from the best. We must dig and even if our digging excavates a few grams of soil nevertheless it will be a fertile soil.
In any case the question “why bother” remains.
In our private mails Robbie asked about an evaluation of a given position which has risen on a game of mine. But this position is not independent from a certain line. If I wanted to show off and be provocative I could just reply with the typical million times played Najdorf position:
White to play
And say look at this: “White has a huge lead in development (3 pieces developed to black’s one) but black has no apparent weaknesses. What do you think”?
I did not do that. I gave him some
annotated games from respected players trying to explain to him what I believe to be the ideas behind the line, the plans that emerge and some short history. Isn’t that a good approach? Isn’t this the way every opening book tries to instill the ideas of every opening to its readers? I did not defend nor rejected something. I didn’t even pretend that I am a line guru. I just did my best to answer the question not by the blessing of GM games but by the help of some good annotations. The fact that they were referring to some recent GM games is completely irrelevant. The absence of these annotations to my post was deliberate to restrain it from becoming too monstrous. It is the annotation that I believe is helpful and not the games themselves. These annotation declared (according to the annotators) that black can do fine not because of the result (after all in the damned Topalov vs Grischuk, black was caught in time trouble missing his winning chances and so the Bulgarian by reaching the endgame was the one who scored). It was just an evaluation.
Dear GP.
It was not the comments but the tone of your reply that made me wonder. What should I have done differently? Why did I deserve to be accused of waffling and showing off? I think you were at least unfair. Do you honestly believe that the average RHP user can comprehend the way David Tebb plays his games? What is the difference to the average player between GM games, IM games, FM games or even top RHP players (such as DT) games? Can you imagine a youngster facing that tone from a seasoned player and one of the most active and responsible forum contributors? He would be frustrated and disappear from the forum for a decade.
I never meant to be disrespectful neither to you nor to DT. But I did not felt that Robbie asked for a poll to count down the “Yes” and the Nays”. He asked because he needed to understand. I tried to provide him not through me but through some seriously annotated and illustrative recent games of the possibilities that are rising. Your analysis on DT’s game and his most appreciated words are what I call a good thread because it produces food for thought. No debate on this one. I think that should do.
P.S. Please excuse a little more “waffling” by a well known deceptive and talkative dead Greek Hero. I just need to quote from Heinz’s blogspot.
“Chandler is a well-respected Chess Writer & Chess Historian from Glasgow, Scotland. I hear that, apart from writing about Chess, he's a huge Celtic fan”.
I hope your Salvos about this fault of mine to be redirected from my pathetic wooden ship to another battleship. 🙂
27 Feb '10 19:58
Please help me evaluate this position
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