I love chess. I hate to lose, but there is
nothing better than setting up some complicated trap and
having your opponent be unable to avoid it. Or
being down significantly in material and snatching a
victory from the metaphorical jaws of defeat.
I subscribe to the theory that there are simply too
many openings to play them all well. Unless your
name is Kasparov you can't possibly be as strong playing
fifty different openings as you can be if you stick to
only a few. So I use a method that learned about
in one of the chess books my father owns.
Use one opening all the time when you are playing
White. Learn the various defenses that Black can
use against you and study the opening lines that can
result. Soon you will find that you are doing much
better than if you used whatever opening happened to pop
into your head as you sat down to play. When I am
White I use the Queen's Gambit. I have studied the
different defenses and the different ways Black has of
trying to disrupt my play, and I am reasonably confident
that I can achieve a good game. I would be far
less confident if I was to switch between the Queen's
Gambit, the King's Gambit, the Ruy Lopez, and the Meises
Opening.
When you are playing Black it is a little more
difficult because White has the first move.
However, White is going to open with P-K4 or P-Q4
virtually all the time. Learn one defense to use
for each opening move and then use it every time you
play. When I am playing Black and White opens with
P-Q4 I use the French Defense. I don't love it,
but it's better than just flying by the seat of my pants
and hoping for the best. When Black opens with
P-K4 I use the Sicilian Defense. I have studied
the permutations that result from these opening lines
and am reasonably confident that I can achieve a good
position going into the middle game.
The worst thing that can happen if you try this
method is that you will lose the game and learn
something in the process. Who cares? If you
always win I can pretty much guarantee that you're not
learning very much and not improving.
I used to play a lot on the
Internet Game Zone, which is hosted my MSN, but
lately I've been using Chessmaster 8000 on my desktop
computer. Far too many people in the Zone want to
play without time limits because they apparently enjoy
taking ten minutes per move. I don't have that
kind of patience when I'm playing a friendly game on the
Internet. It especially drove me nuts when I would
open with P-Q4 and my cyber-opponent would spend ten or
fifteen minutes thinking before responding with their
own opening move. Did I throw them off their game
with my just-about-as-certain-as-death-and-taxes move?
Now they have no idea how to proceed? Come on!
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