Frankly I never met the chess stdent who failed to prosper rapidly due to anything having to do with the opening. Failure to prosper most typically results from lack of commitment, lack of enthusiasm. not taking responsibility for failure, and very often, from insufficient fighting qualities. It happens that some people not really cut out for serious chess are attracted to it, often for social reasons or because of parental pressure.

A change of openings would be one of the last remedies I would propose for a student not doing well with classical methods. I had one promising student who went four tournaments in a row without scoring so much as a half point. His parents said, "When will Johnny start winning?" and I said, "When he gets tired of losing." This statment proved to be correct and the boy, with more application, started to do well again.

I agree completely with Paddy! His choice of references is excellent too!

Göran wrote on 03/26/12 at 18:03:01:


I would bet good money any day on a 1500-junior raised on a Markovich-type  diet of open games, classical opening principles, simple direct plans, lots of tactics practice and a good foundation of basic endgame knowledge, against an average non-Markovich-trained 1500 who opens with 1 c4 or 1 Nf3. 

There is a useful distinction to be made between tactical complexity and strategic complexity. Open games (other then the Ruy Lopez) tend to be tactically complex from quite an early stage. Closed games and Flank Openings tend to postpone the crisis of the game and can give a player the illusion that they are playing decent chess, because they don't lose so quickly! But the loser probably did not understand the position very well, which eventually led to a bad position and a final tactical debacle. I have lost count of the times I have suggested a post-mortem, only to be answered with “no thanks, I know where I went wrong”. I grit my teeth and bite my tongue, suppressing the urge to say “no, you don’t, not really!”.

Tactical skill is so fundamental that it is entirely logical for a coach to prioritize it – in fact anything else is just irresponsible. And one way to do this is to encourage the playing of open games and gambits. It’s not the only way (as I’ve written earlier in this thread), but it’s the most logical way and IMHO should always be tried first. (It almost breaks my heart to attend junior events and see novices wheeling out Flank Openings or Closed Openings.)

It’s no use anyone citing primarily positional players such as Capablanca, Nimzowitsch, Petrosian or Karpov as counter-examples – the fact is that these were all tactical monsters!

Some more "scripture" to add to my earlier collection of quotations:

"If the beginner does not belong to the combinative type then, before anything else, he must learn to combine. (...) we are convinced that the late Schlechter was right in maintaining that every combinative player can become a master of the first category if things are arranged properly." Nimzowitsch, "How I became a grandmaster"

“A season or two of playing open games is an essential stage in the development of anybody who aspires to all-round and to international ability; one should study these openings before going on to the more fashionable defences and closed games.” Leonard Barden and Tim Harding in “The Batsford Guide to Chess Openings”.

There is another issue though. For a conscientious coach, older players who have stalled at a lowish level, or juniors who do not seem to have benefited from a season or two of a Markovich-type regime present a particular problem. If we want these to keep playing our wonderful game, we need to try to protect them from early problems and enable them to survive to reach a middlegame, so for these a repertoire of solid system-type openings can be appropriate. But that does not mean sophisticated, flexible openings such as the Catalan, Reti or the English.

“The English is in many respects similar to Reti’s. Both are openings which derive their strength largely from transposition possibilities. Both involve complicated positional motifs where knowledge and good judgement are equally essential.” I think these words are as true today as when GM Reuben Fine wrote them in 1943.

So far I’ve quoted the “old guys”. For modern corroboration, I recommend GM Nigel Davies’s recent article 'Appropriate Opening Choices' at http://chessimprover.com/?p=391

and for a much fuller discussion, Chapter 9 'Choosing and Preparing Openings' in Volume 4 of IM John Watson's 'Mastering the Chess Openings' series.

Flank openings are tricky from a coaching perspective. The main and relevent reason not to recommend them for children and/or really ambitious adults below 1500 (1800? 2000?) is simply that those players should play and master more tactical positions. 

But I don't buy the argument that flank openings are so much more complex. You can easly build a repertoire around either 1.c4, 2.Nf3, 3.g3, 4.Bg2 and then either b3/Bb2 or preparing b4 with Rb1 and if necessary a3, or the Botvinnik System (a la The Dynamic English) against almost everything. The basic ideas of both these repertoires can be explained in half an hour.

Furthermore, Black players on lower levels don't have a clue what to do against flank openings! So anyone who takes them up early is in real "danger" of getting excellent results with them and sticking to them (maybe exclusively) for years, thus missing out on playing experience with open, tactical positions that would have helped them in the long run.

So for these players 1.c4 is good for short-term results, but bad for long-term improvement!

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 03/26/12 at 19:33:15:


I don't think it correctly characterizes my "'point of view'" to say that I propose a "straight and narrow path."  I advocate that young and developing players try as much as possible to play into open positions where piece play and good tactics are at a premium, up until the point where they can sometimes knock off Masters.  I don't even say that sometimes playing the French or the KID is bad necessarily, only that if you can't sometimes knock off Masters in open positions, you're not ready to specialize in non-open systems. 

I admit that I do strongly advocate the Two Knights, but I wouldn't insist on it.  You can play some nice open games in a Petroff.

I'm not going to debate any more about whether my point of view, which is not a pseudo point of view deserving to be held off in quotation marks, is doctrinaire.  But I nevertheless think that that term is being applied unfairly.

I do think it would have been polite to reply in second person, as well.

The complexity he was talking about was the amount of baggage needed to start playing the lines sensibly, as compared to that needed for more straightforward stuff.

Early on you want to minimise that to allow concentration on the actual play.

Otherwise sure Although there are some lines which really aren't rational for one or the other side at low levels - say ones which allow activity for a better structure, where the technique isn't there to convert the long term advantage.

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 03/26/12 at 00:14:41:


Maybe someone can explain to me why one point of view is "doctrinaire" and the opposing point of view is not doctrinaire.  I have a point of view that I have maintained here strongly.  If I was quoting it from a book, that might be considered doctrinaire.  But I have amply explained the reasons why I advocate it. 

Still I am accused of "dogmatism" and of being "doctrinaire."

I would not say that the main problems with 1.Nf3 and 1.c4 are that they miss a great chance to play 1.e4, which, for reasons I have explained, is much more educational.