ErictheRed wrote on 03/02/12 at 16:42:35:
While we're still off topic: cricket sucks. Ahh, that felt good.
Still off topic: I'm with Stigma and BPaulsen about the whole "what openings people should play" thing. People should try to understand all types of positions as best they can and generally play
whatever interests them most at the time. I think people naturally play better when they are interested, their creative juices are flowing, etc.
Where did this dogmatic idea of having to play 1.e4 e5 come from? I see the importance of learning to play open positions, but surely that isn't the only way to get that experience. People often say that Polugaevsky didn't become world champion because he didn't have experience with 1...e5. Really? I think that's just dogma. How many GMs had extensive experience with 1...e5 and never made world champion?? Tons. Perhaps Polugaevsky, like Korchnoi and many others, was just doomed to be the 2nd or 3rd best player in the world; not such a bad hand to be dealt, that.
Ok I'm done with the off topic posts now
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Well, I am accused of dogmatism because I said, with considerable hyperbole, that if some young and developing player wasn't going to play 1...e5, I would commend his decision to give up chess. In fact however, as I have already said, I do not go around telling juniors to quit the game whenever I see one playing 1...e6.
Nor is my position about 1...e5 all that dogmatic. As I have said in this thread, and many, many times on this forum, it's not what system you play that's important, it's that you have a very firm grasp of how to play in open positions -- which necessarily involves quite a good grasp of tactics. 1...e5 is merely a vehicle for reaching open positions. It's possible to play 1...e5 in a closed vein, and I would discourage anyone below 2000 and bent upon very much chess improvement from doing that.
You can dismiss this position as dogmatic if you like. It really is no more dogmatic than saying that young players should play according to their so-called style, it is just a different point of view. It is, furthermore, a point of view that is fairly widespread among people who coach young and improving juniors (maybe not the 2000 thing exactly, which is arbitrary in any case, but the idea that open positions with active piece play are fundamental).
Personally, as I have said, I would not have a student who did not play the Two Knights. There are other things you could constructively play, but I find the Two Knights a very good teaching tool, and if a kid or his parents doesn't want to string along with me, they can find themselves another coach. I never coached for money.
If a kid told me that he thought the Two Knights was boring I would really doubt his good sense. The Two Knights is not boring; nor is it boring to play the Two Knights in 200 successive games of chess. If given the opportunity, that would be a very good thing for many young players to do. In fact, chess is not boring. Even the Exchange Slav in 200 successive games is not boring. So Boring, so far as I can see, is just as much a straw man as Dogmatic is.
Another straw man here is how easy someone is to prepare for. Every time anyone sat down against one of my kids, they were sure, or could have been sure if they had bothered to ask anyone, that 1...e5 was going to come down. That didn't stop them from doing quite well. But really the idea that anyone would prepare for a sub-2000 player is rather ludicrous.
I really could care a flying fig how anyone approaches chess or how anyone coaches it. But if someone comes on here and asks "what should I play if I want to improve my game," I'm going to say what I think. I'm not going to say "play what ever you want" or "play according to your own style" because I sincerely believe that to be bad advice.
And I also could care a flying fig if anyone here doesn't like it, so long as I myself am maintaining a reasonable standard of politeness.
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Re: best systems for improving players (Read 104769 times)
