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A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

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Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#91

Post by ll931110 »

sverona wrote: post #36
opportune wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically for endgames you pretty much only need to know two patterns that are rather algorithmic: How to close a game where you’re up a rook or a queen (without stalemating). How to close a game where you’re up one pawn, if it’s not a forced stalemate. Two bishops is maybe something you want to learn. Theoretically knight + bishop as well. I play a lot of bullet chess and pretty much never see these though. The r…

There's an old story about a GM who wound up with bishop + knight versus king and realized he'd forgotten how to do it.

Even Women's Chess Champion forgot it once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFF5ibgB6eA

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#92

Post by rgossiaux »

sour-taste wrote: post #16

I find it amazing that a game that's so old doesn't have a dominating opening. I see no reason for that to be the case. Maybe it's just a matter of us not having the computational power to find such an opening and analyze it's continuations to completion. I know that there's a huge number of reachable chess states, but it still seems like there could be an opening that always wins.

Chess is a very rich and pretty well-balanced game--that's what makes it so rewarding to study and to play. Even amongst modern computers that are miles ahead of the best humans, there's nowhere close to a single dominating opening or set of openings. On the human level, there is already far more computer opening theory than most players (including very serious, titled players) are capable of memorizing, so things haven't gotten stale yet.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#93

Post by jacobsenscott »

pmoriarty wrote: post #13

After a lifetime of chess, I've more recently become a fan of Fischer random chess (aka Chess960)[1], where the back rows of pieces are shuffled before the game begins. It puts puts people on a more equal footing in terms of their actual chess playing skills instead of their opening memorization abilities. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

I prefer chess 960 for the same reason. I love playing chess, but really I hate studying openings. All the opening principles (control the center, activate your pieces, etc) apply in chess 960, but you need to think about applying them rather than doing them by rote. This has actually done a lot to improve my traditional chess play. I've gone from terrible to mediocre.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#94

Post by ABCLAW »

georgiecasey wrote: post #53
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin ) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a he…

> What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin) were two things: On what time limit? I'm ~1700 on Rapid but ~1400 on Blitz. I find you need to play a lot of games to get good at quick time limits.

Playing a lot of games doesn't make you better, unfortunately. Especially not in quicker time controls. It just cements your current habits unless you're explicitly reviewing, changing and working on aspects of your play. You have to be making the right choices, then you can work on speed.

Quicker time controls are REALLY good at producing a lot of games for you to identify patterns of your own errors, though! Take a given game, slap on stockfish, then check what tactics you're missing and what positional decisions you made that significantly impacted the bar. On an individual level, not so important, but if you start noticing trends in your errors, you can mass-puzzle the areas you're weak at, etc.

That said, this analysis only works if you know your openings. Contrary to the OP, if your openings are mediocre you can't learn that much from your games. Understanding a system or two in depth will help you develop a 'feel' for what positions are dangerous, which positions are full of potential, etc. At a certain point that intuition will stop requiring 10-15 moves of theory to be sound, and you can start free-styling.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#95

Post by drw »

cactus2093 wrote: post #26
kwertyops wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tactics trainers: https://lichess.org/training/ https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/ https://www.chess.com/puzzles

I'm curious if anyone has advice on how to interpret the ratings in the tactics trainers. Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? I'm pretty new to chess and still pretty bad (just under 1000 online, I make a lot of blunders and/or fall for opponents' tactics) but my rating is 1750 on the tactics trainer. I would imagine at some point the tactics are not the bottleneck and I should be working on something els…

Among chess.com players who have played 10+ blitz games and 10+ puzzles, the average difference between their blitz rating and puzzle rating is 45 (blitz rating higher). The standard deviation of the difference is 374.

Among players who have played 100+ games/100+ puzzles, the difference is -205: puzzle rating substantially higher, standard deviation 320.

I'm not sure that it's ideal for ratings to be identical across the domains, but they should correlate to some degree.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#96

Post by aquateen »

Nemerie wrote: post #79
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

By the way, if the goal is to get better at chess and not just have some fun, a huge waste of time is playing blitz and not analyzing your games. There are so many people who played thousands of blitz games online with no improvement whatsoever.

Blitz and even bullet are great for tactics and pattern recognition, especially for < 2000 rated players.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#97

Post by hcnews »

lcuff wrote: post #88
hcnews wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My advice to beginners is to not stick with one opening, but to play them all. Include wild openings like the Kings Gambit and Danish Gambit, as well as strategic openings like the Queen's Gambit. You will be out of 'the book' very quickly, and that's actually good. You'll be learning to play, rather than recall. This is opposite of general advice. Beginners should play only one white opening and 2 black openings (…

My experience playing one opening (d4/Queens gambit) as a beginner is that I failed to develop my tactical skills, which are used much more in gambits (but not the Queens gambit) and e4 openings generally. And I'd further argue that playing 'one opening' when you only know 2 or 3 moves is not really playing any opening, so it doesn't matter (much). I'd also say, learning the main opening principles: develop your piec…

Playing small number of openings is a general advice by IM/GM teachers for beginner players. This makes sense since the focus is on endgames and middlegames in the initial learning curve.

There's nothing stopping you from practicing tactics even if you play d4 openings as white. I have been a mainly d4 player as white so far (London, BDG, QG) and have had quick ratings growth (Start -> 1650 chess.com rapid in 5 months).

Also, an opening is more like 7-10 moves (not 2-3 moves) where all the minor pieces have been developed and the player has castled.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#98

Post by hornd »

birken wrote: post #30
idealism wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying and agree, although I may suggest that 1700 number come down a bit to maybe 1200. I'm around the 1000-1200 range (just picked it up again recently) and I'd say most of my peers on Chess.com around that range have definitely studied openings and present sneaky traps consistently in the first ~5-15 moves. Playing as black for me is the real driving force for me to study openings because…

It is a question of opportunity cost. If you are studying openings at the expense of doing tactical puzzles and sharpening your tactics, it is not the most efficient use of your time at the 1200 level. If you have a 1200 level tactics skill and 1500 level openings skill, you are going to be about a 1200 rated player. If you have a 1500 level skill in tactics, you are going to be about a 1500 rated player regardless o…

Yeah I'm not so sure though. I'm 1900 rated tactics on lichess but a middling 1300 on normal games. Perhaps it might be due to playing blitz where I don't have lots of time to think.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#99

Post by billfruit »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #32
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin ) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a he…

I am not at any skill level, but I do think that after some time studying endgame patterns, I could easily apply them in finally forcing the mate in end games, whereas studying openings seems more abstract and unclear how exactly it is going to benefit.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#100

Post by oldstrangers »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #32
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin ) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a he…

1700 on lichess is about 1400-1500 on chess.com. Lichess tends to be about 200 points overrated on average.
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