Exeter Chess Club

A bit of perspective

Your opening choices are determined by:

Your style: are you a Steady Eddie or a Bonkers Billie?

Your memory: can you commit the key traps and variations to memory?

Your study time: can you find and absorb what you need to play this system well?

Your aims: are you trying to get a playable position? are you trying to
set your opponent problems, so they make a mistake? are you inviting
your opponent to waltz with you blindfold on the edge of a cliff? are
you trying to lure them into unfamiliar territory, or a trap?

Trouble with b6

"I'm having trouble getting ...b6 to work against 1.e4"

1.e4 b6

[Event "Coaching"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2015. 0. 0"]
[Round "?"]
[White "NN"]
[Black "NN"]
[Result "*"]
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/p1pppppp/1p6/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 2"]
[Setup "1"]

*

"I'm not surprised!"

Any opening is only as good as the ideas you bring to it. I don't think
I heard much from you about what your ideas were in playing ...b6: what
sort of position do you hope to get to play?

The ideas behind some systems can be pretty straightforward - for
example, I think the Evans Gambit and the French Defence and the Colle
System can be picked up pretty quickly by club players, and the extra
ideas you need as your opponents get better at meeting your new opening
can be added fairly easily. The French Defence in particular often
leads to the same sort of pawn structure (white Pd4 Pe5 vs black Pd5
Pe6), so, even if you don't recognise the exact variation, you can still
have a good idea about the best plans for both sides.

1...b6 is a rarity - you will struggle to find many books to read, or
games to follow. If you look it up in the books, you will find most of
the lines end in +=. The ideas behind the opening are hard to find or
understand: I think it can be best interpreted as a hypermodern defence,
letting White occupy the centre then hoping to get play later, either by
deciding on your own central setup once you have seen what White has
done, or using the centre as a target. I think it ends up as += because
that is hard to do! Also, you aren't going to get the same structures
and ideas in each game, and you are going to lose games that you don't
understand.

My advice: pick something else!

[h3]

We welcome to the club a bunch of new members, among whom is Ian
Simpson, who comes to give us better weather, or, at least, better
weather forecasts.

Ian is a big gambit fan and is looking forward to the Rex Willis
Memorial Gambit Blitz Tournament in the Spring.

Ian has his own website which discusses lots of gambit lines:
http://tws27.weebly.com/
Looks good! And essential revision material for the Rex Willis event...

Work in progress...

How to decide if the Dutch Defence is good for you
--------------------------------------------------
Just taking the Dutch Defence as an example...

Do you think it suits you? (Do your friends think it suits you?)
Do the ideas you read about go into your memory?
Do the ideas you remember actually turn up in your games?
Do you get good results with it?
Do the results in your games have anything to do with the opening?
Can your opponents avoid the lines you like to play?

Philidor's Defence -- see recent post
-------------------------------------

This page is a play-through version of
http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/lessons-philidors-defence

[pgn]
[Event "Lessons in Philidor's Defence"]
[Site "Exeter"]
[Date "2014.06.07"]
[Round "1"]
[White "NN"]
[Black "Philidor"]
[Result "*"]
[ECO "C41"]

...questions were expressed this time as a series of dilemmas.

1.e4 or 1.d4?

Long answer:

1.e4 is likely to lead to open and semi-open games, while 1.d4 is more likely to lead to closed and other more

Lesson 1. The first system to learn and play for both sides

 
Italian Game (Giuoco Piano) with c3
 

[Event "Berlin Jubilee"]
[Site "Berlin"]
[Date "1907.??.??"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Von Scheve, Theodor"]
[Black "Teichmann, Richard"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C53"]
[PlyCount "34"]
[EventDate "1907.??.??"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Qe7 5. O-O d6 6. d4 Bb6 7. a4 a6 8. a5 Ba7
9. h3 Nf6 10. dxe5 Nxe5 11. Nxe5 Qxe5 12. Nd2 Bxh3 13. gxh3 Qg3+ 14. Kh1 Qxh3+
15. Kg1 Ng4 16. Nf3 Qg3+ 17. Kh1 Bxf2 0-1

"When I am White I win because I am White, when I am Black I win because I am Bogoljubow." - Efim Bogoljubow.

I'm still thinking about this, so bear with me, and comments invited...

I pounced on Nunn's Chess Openings when it came out, and found some things that I found puzzling.  Openings like the Dutch Stonewall, which I had always thought of as being fundamentally flawed, were being shown as equal, while superior approaches like the Classical Dutch were coming out as +=.

Two open gambits

Richard was interested in the Urusoff Gambit and Eddie in the Scotch Gambit.
Gambits offer a pawn for fast development and/or control of the centre. I approve very much of this way of playing, and it's the first thing I offer juniors as an alternative to playing Old Stodge with both White and Black in every game.

Here's a starter for each:
[pgn]
[Event "Urusov Gambit"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2012.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "White"]
[Black "Black"]
[Result "*"]
[ECO "A00"]
[PlyCount "19"]