Quote:While Bogo was clearly a bit full of himself, this attitude of White playing with the advantage of the first move seems to have been lost a bit among non-professional grade players. Let's fix that!
We can't fix that because it is not existent in the first place.
For example, how many times have you got 18…Nc6 or whatever in Classical KID? Or for that matter a 26th move improvement recommended by Chris Ward in Dragon? Well, the honest answer would be ‘zero’ if your opponent is rated below 2200.
As part of my cutting edge theory study, I’m presently looking at Winnaver now. Out of curiosity, I transferred the lines to a chessbase file. There are 79 lines in 8.Qg4 Nbc6 lines alone! I didn’t even include 8…f5. At this count PTF3 should have 2000 line in Winnaver alone. What is the predicament of someone wanting learn (completely) KID and Sicilian Najdorf from black side and Open Sicilian, Nc3 French and Marshall Attack as white? What kind of a life someone who does that will lead? I would really pity him.
The fact of the matter is, it is not done and it can’t be done, if you want to pass out with good grades or pay the bills and take care of family or girl friend! It’s a blessing in disguise!
I don’t want to play chess if we are forced to dish out 25 moves from the book, play 5 or 6 original moves and then hand over the game to Nalimov Tablebase!
The moment one player goes of book within 15 moves, both players go out of book and that’s fun. That’s the way out fathers played, that’s the way we play and that’s the way our children would play.
Now I’m feeling like a broken record when it comes to this topic (or perhaps about talent in chess) and I’ll try to avoid posting this view again.
All I want to say is that opening is important. To the extent of knowing the setups, general direction of the expected middle game and not stepping on to the mine fields. Beyond that, which particular choice of move number 13 will give 0.13 pawn advantage is meaningless. It’s nice to do it here to generally widen our knowledge so long as we don’t try to put it rigorously in practice.
@Inn2
I’m also like you, except that I prefer to go the Nf3,e3,Nbd2 way if I can’t get my Bg5 in.