HgMan wrote on 08/27/08 at 12:52:59:


What is your preferred move order?

White is White and Black is Black, so I will play much more aggresively as the former than as the latter.  As White you can play for a win out of the box, as Black you have to weasel around to get winning chances -- or hope for White to do something wrong. So I will play the KID as Black much more than the KIA as White, for example, and I will play the Sicilian much more than the English.

Are you pleased with the positions you get from the Catalan? If yes then don't change and work on your catalan repertoire which is an opening that can serve you for years and you don't have to change it even if you become very very strong - it's a grandmaster opening

I've performed with a TPR of around 200 elo points higher with black for quite a while now, and thus have issues with white, but...

One thing I remember from a old book (I think by Mednis) is about players who judged the game in such a way that they played differently with black and white.  Polugaevsky was cited as a player who believed white enjoyed a stable long term advantage, so as white would solidly trundle out things like 1 c4 and grind his opponent down. With black he wheeled out the sharper stuff (e.g. Najdorf) in an attempt to complicate and knock white off balance. (Tony Miles was another "solid, positional" with white player and "sharp, offbeat, chaotic" with black).

Someone else was cited as the other end of the scale - with white 1 e4 and all out attack to complicate as much as possible, with black play solidly to eliminate white's tempory advantage.

Perhaps you should also think about how your approach with both colours complement each other.  Another way of putting it, is that if you like certain types of position for one colour, shouldn't you avoid it with the other?

I particularly bring this up, since I would think that the Catalan/Reti approach is already different (rather than same, as you seem to imply?) to your black defences which feature classical, fairly fixed centres.  Trying a solid QG style centre against the catalan is usually at least a comfortable edge for white, while the more fluid open catalan gives black more play.  But saccing the c-pawn and looking to break in the centre with e4/d4, or get an ending where the open c & d files help you attack the weak a6&b5 pawns seem quite different to me.

Or, in other words, your white repertoire is geared to avoid the positions where you would want to be black?