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The Study of the Opening - Part
4
In the first three parts of this article we discussed the importance of gathering games from top-level practice to learn the ideas about your repertoire openings, and systematized the repertoire by taking into consideration the ECO codes. Now we'll finish outlining the process as we see it. Gathering the lines and analyses We have seen that restricting the lines to be studied from your opening of choice can be accomplished by using the ECO codes and that your repertoire may require the study of more or less sections of the code depending on the opening you select. We also hinted that any set of choices in the openings repertoire is a valid one if you understand the opening and enjoy playing it. Did you remember to gather all the chess books and openings books that we asked you to? Well, it is time to put them to work. For instance, Reinfeld’s lines in The Complete Chess Player against the Center Game and the Danish Gambit are kind of cute and we would like you to play over them just to follow up with the process of our 1…e5-hero:
Of course, these lines have other variations for both sides. Consider them carefully! We used Reinfeld’s book to dispose of these lines but if you have MCO or BCO or any other book that covers these lines, do include those variations in your file. Nowadays, with the software available for such things, it is a breeze to take care of the lines emanating from 2.d4.
See, in our opinion Black doesn’t do anything fantastic and extraordinary in the C22 line - both knights are developed speedily, the king’s bishop comes out actively, the king is safely castled and finally the king’s rook occupies an open file. It makes sense! The line of course continues and there are a number of things that can happen in the game but Black came up with a reasonable system against one of the possible choices of White in the Center Game. Further research will take the student up to the 10th move or something similar. Can White vary the game in the meantime? Yes, but you will be ready for those things because you are making moves that are reasonable and if a refutation needs to be found why not be confident about finding it? The line with the Danish Gambit looks sturdy as well - you take whatever pawns are offered to you, consolidate the center, and post your knight on the very imposing c5 square. What can White do to prevent you from developing your pieces and securing your king? Just in case you are not satisfied, let us tell you that two engines (Crafty and Fritz) gave Black an advantage of about 1.4 pawns. Need we look at a database to study some games? Depending on the complexity of the issue, you should. However, don’t get crazy gathering games for obscure lines that you can refute over the board. For example, looking for 1.e4 e5 2. Qh5 games on the Internet is a waste of time and hardly productive. Applying the principles you learned about the opening in general (we warned you about those before) you should be able to find a response to this kind of nonsense based on good opening principles. If someone beats you with a strange line, look it up. I would play: 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nc6 Protecting the hanging e-pawn. 3.Bc4 g6 Taking care of the mate threat at f7. 4.Qf3 Nf6 Taking care of the mate threat while developing a piece. 5.Qb3 Qe7
There was a threat on f7… The king’s bishop will be developed via g7. Enough of that! We are proud of you Tony. We believe that preparing for moves like 2.a3 / 2.f3 or any other nonsense like that is a waste of time and energy. Be confident about finding a workable solution to these situations over the board and devote your time to more pressing matters. Just in case, let us gather some games with C22 and C21 from www.chessbase.com and www.chessgames.com in order to cover all bases. The first thing we notice is that there are only eight games in chess-base with the Danish gambit line that we chose to play and that the statistics are poor (5 losses / 2 wins / 1 draw). If we check in MCO 13th Ed. the line is not even there! Is the line bad? You should rely on your judgment when adopting a line or not. In cases like this the chess player would be very happy because the line is not found in MCO and has been played rarely in master practice. Before jumping to conclusions let us merge the games into a single one using ChessBaseLite or commercial versions of ChessBase and try to bust or glorify our discovery in the Danish Gambit by feeding it to Fritz, Ruffian, Crafty, and Yace (i.e. chess engines, of which the last three are free…) This is the text with the merged games after polishing it a little: Danish Gambit Line C21:
Main Variation from Fred Reinfeld. Side-lines from the games: A) 6.Qf3 This is the kind of move that needs to be refuted. We would do 6…Qe7 with the possible idea of checking at b4 threatening both bishops. The follow up for black is with d6 – Nd7 – and the Nc5 or Ne5 (again with tempo because of the attack on white’s queen) etc. The same idea that is applied in the main line seems to work here. The rest of the game is not consistent with this idea and therefore is just kept for future reference of what to avoid. 6…d5 7.exd5 Qe7+ 8.Kf1 Nf6 9.Nd2 cxd5 10.Bxf6 Qxf6 11.Re1+ Be7 12.Qxd5 0–0 13.Re3 Nc6 14.Rf3 Qa1+ 15.Ke2 Nd4+ 16.Ke3 Nxf3 17.Ndxf3 Qc1+ 18.Ke2 Be6 19.Qd2 Bxc4+; 6.Qb3 Qe7 7.Ne2 Qb4+ 8.Bc3 Qxb3 9.axb3 d6 10.0–0 Be6 11.Nd2 b5 12.Bxe6 fxe6 13.Nd4 Kd7 14.N2f3 Nf6 15.Rfe1 e5 16.Nc2 h6 17.Rad1 Ke6 18.Nh4 1–0 Weiz,W-Sneiders, E/W theme corr 1989;B) 6.Nf3 B1) 6...d6 7.0–0 Nd7 8.Nc3 Nc5 We like 8…Nb6 better here, because of the tempo gained by attacking the bishop, followed by Bg4 or Nxc4 if the bishop decides to stay put. Perhaps 8…Nc5 is just as good but the idea with 8…Nb6 looks more flexible. 9.Qd2 Be6 10.Bxe6 Nxe6 11.Rab1 Qa5 12.Qc2 Rd8 13.Ne2 Ne7 14.Bc3 Qa6 15.Rb4 b6 16.Rd1 d5 17.Ng3 c5 18.Ra4 Qb7 19.exd5 Nxd5 20.Re1 Be7 21.Rxe6 fxe6 22.Bxg7 Rg8 23.Qxh7 Kd7 24.Qh6 Nc7 25.Be5 b5 26.Ra3 c4 27.Re3 Nd5 28.Re2 Rge8 29.Ne4 Qa6 30.Re1 Kc8 31.Nd4 Malm,A-Fedorko,A/IECC 1998/Draw (45) B2) 6…b5 Definitely not! Black wants to build up his development and avoid breaking open the position… It just helps White with his idea… I will not even look at the rest of the game. 7.Bb3 Nf6 8.0–0 Bc5 9.Ng5 0–0 10.Qc2 d6 11.e5 g6 12.exf6 Bf5 13.Qd2 Nd7 14.g4 d5 15.gxf5 Nxf6 16.Qc3 Be7 17.fxg6 hxg6 18.Qxc6 Qe8 19.Bxd5 Nxd5 20.Qxd5 Bxg5 21.Qxg5 f6 22.Bxf6 Qf7 23.Bd4 Qh7 24.Qxb5 Rfe8 25.Qd5+ Qf7 26.Nc3 Qxd5 27.Nxd5 Red8 28.Ne7+ Kf7 29.Nc6 Re8 30.Bxa7 Re6 31.Rfc1 Rc8 32.Ne5+ Rxe5 33.Rxc8 Re7 34.Be3 1–0 Soldini,P-Owens,J/IECG EM 1999 6...b5 As we decided this is a no-no. Our main line and repertoire move is 6...d6 7.Qb3 Qe7 8.Nf3 d5 This move shows that black went wrong… 9.Bxd5 cxd5 10.Nxd5 A) 10...Qxe4+ 11.Kf1 Kd8 12.Rd1 Nd7 13.Be5 Ne7 14.Nc7 b6 (14...Qf5 15.Nb5 Nc6 16.Bc7+ Ke7 17.Re1+ Kf6 18.Qc3+ Nde5 19.Bxe5+ Ke7 20.Bf6+ Kd7 21.Qd2+ 1–0 Preo,N-Schwarz,J/corr 1982) 15.Qxf7 Qxe5 16.Nxe5 Kxc7 17.Qf4 Nxe5 18.Qxe5+ Kb7 19.Rc1 Rb8 20.Qe4+ Ka6 21.Rc7 b5 22.Qe3 Rb7 23.Qa3+ Kb6 24.Qd6+ Ka5 25.Rc3 b4 26.Rc5+ Rb5 27.Qd8+ Ka6 28.Qd3 Bd7 29.Qd6+ 1–0 Baudoin,J-Tinture,L/FRA corr 1993; B) 10...Be6 11.Qb5+ Bd7 12.Qxb7 Qxe4+ 13.Kd2 Bb4+ 14.Bc3 Bxc3+ 15.Kxc3 Qa4 16.Rhe1+ Kf8 17.Nc7 Qc6+ 18.Qxc6 Bxc6 19.Rad1 g6 20.Rd8+ Kg7 21.Nxa8 Nf6 22.Rxh8 Nd5+ 23.Kc4 Kxh8 24.Nd4 1–0 Preo,N-Woronzoff/corr 1982] Let us recap what can Black do against the Danish gambit:
See? We just learned an obscure line against the Danish Gambit that provides Black a viable position by applying five main ideas. Hey! Even if the line escapes your mind you know what to do and how to take care of business because you understand what’s going on. Notice as well that we spared no comments in the little file we created for C21. Are we through with C21? Unless there is a major hole here that you or an engine can spot we believe that we can craft our line against the Center Game. We can’t stress these things enough even with this simple example:
Wow! Our friend practiced the Danish Gambit with an engine and got the best out of the engine. Maybe he will not encounter that opening in OTB games but he is ready [Before you, dear reader, say anything let me say that I, Diego, had to deal with a Latvian gambit as White and the experience wasn’t pleasant at all… Shame on me for not having worked one or two basic lines in that opening like our friend here did with the Danish gambit.] What is the most amazing feature of this preparation work? That the line came from “The Complete Chess player” by Reinfeld! The line wasn’t even discussed in MCO! There were only a few games in the databases from the Internet! The remarkable thing is that the whole line is easy to remember and easy to apply over the board and that statistics could have prevented us from learning a nice, simple line. The message is play what you believe is right and whatever proves correct when checked with engines and strong players. Would you be able to work out the lines of C22? You already have a head start with Reinfeld’s line. We also found the same line with an extra variation in MCO 13th ed. but that shouldn’t be a huge effort once you can collect some games and merge them into a nice text file like the Danish Gambit. Most of the games we found are from the 19th Century, but that shouldn’t prevent you from studying them and coming up with the basic principles. Well then, since the matter of coming up with a response against the Center Game is trivial we will leave our friend alone and let him work on this line. Those ugly transpositions: Let us suppose for a moment that the player with White detected that something wasn’t right and that our hero, playing Black, was sharper than ever and that after playing 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 he played 3. Nf3. What have we got in front of us? Right, the Scotch opening! Is this opening to be feared? Well, we will not try to argue with Kasparov and try to come up with an idea that follows the traditional lines that have been played but try something different. Since we have seen that Reinfeld’s book seem to work let us check that one first: C45: Scotch Game 1.e4 e5 2.d4 cxd4 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Nxd4 Bc5 5.Be3 Qf6 6.c3 Nge7 7.Nc2 Bxe3 8.Nxe3 0-0 9.Be2 d6 10.0-0 Be6 is assessed as good for Black by Reinfeld. The other line with Nf6 is also possible but our student is trying to learn something straightforward and easy to remember for black. The lines with Nf6 for black are perfectly acceptable but lately there has been a major theoretical discussion in them that perhaps we should not engage in. Have mercy on the student of our story and understand his motivations for not trying to engage the Scotch Game with the most fashionable moves. Our hero wants to avoid accidents and therefore learns spontaneous lines that can be played over the board without too much memorization. Despite the fact that a nasty transposition appeared it is still possible to deal with it in the same manner that we disposed of the Danish Gambit. However, the Scotch Game is much more sophisticated than the Danish Gambit. Ergo, it requires more care. We would even advise you to play up to the 15th move and be twice as attentive here. Ah! Can you spot another transposition to the Scotch and Goring Gambits? They happen here too! Let us recap at this point what have we done here:
The path is far from being completed in the construction of this sample repertoire but the remaining openings are studied in about the same way as with the Danish Gambit. For the sake of brevity we will spare the reader in the remaining openings and proceed to the conclusion of this saga. Epilogue What happened to the hero of our little story? He crafted a nice repertoire to face 1.e4 over the board with moves that he actually understands. At the end he had something like this: 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Bc5. Yes, he decided to decline the King’s Gambit with 2…Bc5 which is a reasonably good move. Most of his lines came from Edward Lasker’s book “Chess Strategy” Ah! And guess who are the specialists in this line? Karl Schlechter and David Janowski! 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 for the Vienna game… 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 He managed to learn his beloved Petroff at last… Of course, the possibilities of the student were endless at the beginning but in any case he was able to narrow down the moves to suit his style of play. For instance, he could have chosen to play 2…Nc6 in the last line instead of learning the Petroff. Perhaps 2…Nf6 is better against the Vienna? Maybe, but he chose the move in the line because that is what works for him. And how about accepting the King’s Gambit? Again, perfectly valid, but he chose to decline the gambit with his bishop move. The main message is that the student adapted his opening study to suit his needs, his style and his preferences. Ah! Lastly, our student analyzed his games for spotting mistakes in the opening, middle-game and endings. As far as we know he is still using the repertoire he crafted so carefully, learning from his mistakes, and improving steadily. We hope that our presentation sparked some ideas for your improvement and enjoyment of chess.
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