Friday, May 21, 2010

Opening Tale

 It's time to take a short break from Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) history to share a discusion that I recently came across at an online forum. 

The original poster expressed his concern, received suggestions, and then made his responses.


Importance of openings at low level?

I read somewhere that at the low level, you should avoid studying openings, since that time would be better spent studying other things like tactics or combinations (etc.) or playing more games, however I do enjoy studying openings and that's why I do it.

At FICS, I'm rated between 1200 and 1300, sometimes I have winning strikes and sometimes I have losing ones, and today I decided to look over at my games, to discover that I'm really good at the openings I know, and that I can beat higher rated opponents in those openings, just because I know them better.

But the opposite is true, that I'm pretty bad at openings I don't know, and lower rated opponents beat me at these, here's a worst case example:

[Date "2007.09.08"]
[White "My opponent"]
[Black "Me"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1102"]
[BlackElo "1216"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Ng5+ Ke8 6.d3 Bc5 7.O-O h6 8.Nf3 d6 9.h3 Be6 10.Nh4 Qe7 11.Ng6 Qf7 12.Nxh8 Kd7 1-0

It has to be my worst game ever, seeing as I had a won position at move 4, and I just suicided. It made me wonder if all the opening preparation worked, since maybe I'd behave like this on all openings (Since all openings would be unknown if I didn't study them), what do you think?

If you study many master games, you will get a feeling for the general opening principles like developement, center, tempo... and the typical moves, independant from memorized variations. Applying these in practise will get better and easier, the more practise you have...

Important is, to not just recall opening patterns and move too quickly, but concrete calculation if you don't have a theory move available...
 
But, on the game I posted I couldn't think anymore, my concentration went off the drain, I just couldn't keep playing against a weaker opponent with such an advantage, I was still shocked by the unsound sacrifice, and lost focus, I wonder if that was his plan from the beginning?

After Qe7 I guess you noticed your mistake and paniced. There's no reson for that! Just wait 15 minutes and do nothing, walk around, calm down and only start to think if you think that you can think clear without a bad feeling of "oh my god, i just made a blunder". Maybe you would have found the idea of Qd7 followed by g5 and Qg7 to get the knight, then it would be about equal!

Yes, I paniced, but my point is that I paniced when he went 4.Bxf7+! I think it was too much for me, maybe I need to practice those kind of openings?

...Well, I don't have enough time to do so, since my games are at 8 mins +3 secs time control, though I may try to do nothing for 3 minutes when my opponent starts throwing unsound sacrifices at me and I panic.

Thanks, I'll try to find games with unbalanced situations like the one on the first game I posted, I wonder how often does it happen on master games?

Meanwhile, I'll just stop looking at the board and do something else (for a while) when my opponent decides to go bonkers.

After a totally unsound move like 4.Bxf7+, you dont panic. You laugh, because you know your opponent's silly move is refutable, and if you can keep cool and take care for any combinative risks, you will win this game...

Look at Morphy's games and at the world championship games, there will you find more about what to do in sharp positions.

Thanks to everyone for your replies, I've been following your suggestions and I think I can handle things better now, what is discouraging is that today I was accused of using a bot to play, all this effort is worth nothing when your opponent just thinks you're cheating (when you're obviously not doing so).


So: our Original Poster shared his woes, received support and advice, and improved his game enough that at least one opponent mistook him for a computer!

Still...

The opening of the game in question was similar enough to the Jerome Gambit and its kin that I just had to check the FICS database and see if I could find it!

I did.

Of course, the "villain" with White was none other than our Jerome Gambit Gemeinde member, DragonTail.

Keep up the good work!

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