Funny, it appears to be that what I just posted earned me the right to post links, so here it is: http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/chess/YaBB.pl?num=1393286461/11

IsaVulpes wrote on 12/15/14 at 17:08:22:


I think I might be able to add something interesting to this thread. Not because of my great chess knowledge but because I was in pretty much the same situation. I had been playing the english with white since I started playing chess and reached a rating of about 1800 (I'm at the same age as well, though I guess it doesn't matter much). However, I felt like making a change and had the feeling that only playing 1. c4 was limiting my progress. I developed a very timid nature of play and i shied away from risky decisions. I ruled out 1. d4 and wanted to learn 1. e4. However the selection of lines took a while and I guess I had the same problems as you. I eventually ended up preparing 1. e4 for about a year and a half before I finally dared to play it in tournaments. In restrospect I think I had should've started with practicals game earlier because of the comparably low level of my opponents' preparation. The learning by doing approach is probably a good choice here. You will always miss out on some variations so you might as well start playing 1. e4 a little bit sooner than a little bit later.
I will try to explain my choices and also give some literature recommendation. What you didn't say but might be important is if you like learning theory. You say amount of theory doesn't matter but in some cases it will be useful if you are better prepared. If you like opening theory I would generally go for theoretically more heavy choices.

Against 1. e4 e5 I guess the d3 Ruy Lopez is a good choice I think. I guess avoiding the Marshall is a sane decision and chosing something else than main line is going to reduce the amount of time for studying. I chose the modern italian game with d3 and c3. I think play is comparable to the d3 Ruy Lopez. I think both openings offer plenty of scope to outplay your opponents. I think for the d3 Ruy Lopez McDonalds move by move book is a good choice. It's not theoretically heavy but has good explanations. I used Emms Beating 1. e4 e5 which is a book on the italian game. The book has some weak spots theoretically but offers very helpful explanations. My practical experiences are limited though, since I only encountered 1. e4 e5 against opponents much weaker than me.
You will not meet the Petroff very often, so I wouldn't spend too much time preparing this. The line you mentioned is easy to play over the board and a good try.

Against the sicilian 1. e4 c5 the open sicilian is the right choice in my opinion. I initially considered the grand prix attack but eventually figured that playing the open sicilian will teach me a lot more things. I didn't consider Be2 sicilians and instead went for the english attack using Jesus de la Villa's book and Experts vs. the Sicilian for Dragons. The sicilian is tons of work anyhow but around the 1800 level most players have no deep theoretical knowledge. I meet sidelines with an early Qb6 much more often than the various main line systems. I don't think you go wrong or anything with the Be2 sicilian but you might also considering attacking systems here. I would like to show a game played last week end by me against a player of roughly equal strength. The game was a dragon and I was basically out of book at move 8 because I hadn't study the idea of late castling. Still some general ideas were enough because to find the right moves at the board because my opponent wasn't terribly well prepared either. I will give the game at the very end of this post in case you are interested. Also you didn't really specify which variations of the english opening you played but I think there are some resemblences with the kingside expansion in the english against a king's indian set-up which I met in about 30% of my 1. c4 games.

The french is the first opening in which I'd recommend something else really. I'm sure the advance is a good system but I think you should consider learning 3. Nc3. When I played the french with black I always liked meeting the advance best and I know other french players feel the same. You say that 3. Nc3 looks like madness. I guess you are talking about the Winawer here. From my (limited) experience you won't meet many players going for the Winawer at this level. The Winawer bears a lot of risk for black too and with two players not really booked up like a GM white has the easier game (my impression at least). Most of the time you'll meet 3...Nf6 when 4. e5 gives white a nice and stable space advantage with reasonable play. The same goes for the Rubinstein with 3...dxe4.
Especially if you like chess theory you'll fancy 3. Nc3.
I used Kazimdhanovs DVDs which were very helpful (but that's 3 DVDs for a single opening). Negi's GM repertoire is also excellent (but of course much more theoretically heavy).

The caro kann is hard nut to crack imo. Very solid opening which you'll meet only from time to time. I haven't played against it over the board so I can't really say much. The exchange 3. exd5 cxd5 5. Bd3 is a reasonable but timid choice which avoids heavy amounts of theory. I decided to use 3. Nd2 and follow Negi's recommendation but I don't know if this will work out ...
The panov sets you under pressure to "do something" because of the static weakness of the IQP. I think if you can go for such a choice against the caro kann I think Nc3 against the french shouldn't be a problem.

Scandinavian: Andrew Greet - Beating unusual chess defences: 1. e4 recommends the 3. Nf3 idea (so it exists!). I like the system and my opponents didn't like it. So I guess it's a good choice.
For the Aljechin and Pirc/Modern I go with Greet's recommendations as well, which are 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 and the austrian attack against the Pirc. The advantage is that you got all three systems explained in one book. I didn't have the impression that play in Austrian attack was insanely irrational and the broad pawn center sets Black under immidiate pressure (at least psychologically ... again from my experience). But if you already have a good source for the 150 attack that should be a good choice.

Against 1. e4 b6 you can play 2. c4 if you played this line as black

So far for my recommendations. I think you could consider sharpening your choices a little bit (in the sicilian, the french and maybe the Pirc), especially if you like chess theory you will crush some of your opponents. I hope this helped you a bit.


Now, to conclude this rather long post, the game I talked about in the sicilian section. It was my first encounter with the dragon and I hope it serves as a motivator for picking up 1. e4. Before 1. e4 wouldn't have thought to play this kind of game anytime soon . I didn't need much theoretical knowledge here, even though the game can be found up to move 14 in experts vs. the sicilian.

IsaVulpes wrote on 12/15/14 at 17:08:22:



I could suspect that the simple d3 is the best and least committal way to avoid the Marshall. You are not ruling out playing d4, just deferring it for a bit to see what Black tries. The game will be quiet for a few moves, but once d4  is played, all the tensions of the non-Marshall variations will be in place. Black has to contend with the apparent lack of threat leaving him vulnerable to misplacing pieces and pawns.

Hello!

Apologies in advance if the question posed in this thread has been asked a million times already (I figure it must've been!), but this forum's search function is.. questionable, and after digging through 30 pages of Googlesearch for "site:chesspub.com repertoire" with inconclusive results (99% of results either being black or 1.d4 repertoires), I decided to open this after all.

I am a 1700-1800 rated guy in his 20s that currently has quite decent results with the English, but is growing increasingly bored of having "the same position" on the board in every match + is afraid that it is going to stump his chess development. 
I quite like the opening still! And don't think I will permanently drop it, but at least I want to branch out a bit and get to see some new stuff on the board - 
And 1800s seem to be the last big rating group where people have no real idea what they're doing in the opening, so I figured it would be a good point to learn Ruy/Open Sicilians here, where I am able to get a feel for the arising positions and middlegame plans without getting blasted off the board (meaning, if I climbed to 2000 with my trusty English and then tried to learn the e4-complex, I'd sit in front of a monumental task; while if I do it now, I'll already have some base groundwork on how the positions look like, so it'll be less work to learn proper).

As such, I'd like to switch!

What I am looking for:
- 1.e4 
- Rich positions with active piece play, where I get to learn lots of things (no 10 piece exchanges by the 12th move)
- While the "theoretical evaluation" plays little to no role at my level, I would prefer not to play dubious lines which only work against people who haven't seen them before; equality after the opening is perfectly fine, =+ or worse I would rather not get on the board (so no questionable gambits etc)
- The amount of theory is largely irrelevant (my opponents won't know it anyway), as long as the moves are possible to find OTB (so no "The only path to a good position is accepting a highly questionable pawn structure, which will get justified by an exchange sacrifice on the 19th move" or whatever)
- If given the choice, I would prefer a more "solid" gameplan, rather than a mess on the board with both players having 4 hanging pieces and me blasting another speculative sacrifice on f7. Those games are fun to play occasionally, but I'd rather not every game looked like that (I played the English for a reason!)

What I got so far:

1) v e5 / Nc6
- Ruy Lopez
Lot's of theory, but most of it seems to be "natural moves". Fun positions. Really, half the reason why I even got the idea to go for 1.e4, I don't really want to debate this one! 
Except: I would like to not get a Marshall on the board. I don't particularly like the idea of an early d3, as it seems to go against the plan of playing for d4; from the Anti-Marshalls I looked at, 8.a4 seemed to be the most natural (as in, it looked the most like a move I want to make in any case), though 8.h3 is also fine I guess? Not sure on that part.

2) v Petrov
- Unsure?
I used to play 3.Ne5: d6 4.Nf3 Ne4: 5.Nc3 Nc3: 6.dc3: and it's probably okay, but the more I look at this position, the more I ask myself whether I really want to play a position where, 6 moves in as white, I have no central pawns left, nothing beyond the 3rd rank, and doubled pawns on the queenside.
If there's nothing better, I can stick to it as it fits my 'needs' sufficiently well (those open lines!), but maybe someone has a different idea?

3) v Sicilian
- Open with Be2
I don't want Closed/etc (if alone due to "If I 'dodge' the by far most common answer to 1.e4, why am I playing 1.e4?"), and I don't want wild hickhacks, so this seemed like the most principled solution. If the opponent castles early, I can go for that g2-g4 push if I feel like it; else I got a "open but sufficiently solid" position? 
A thing I thought of was adding 3.Bb5 against 2. ..Nc6, to cut down a bit of workload (avoiding the Sveshnikov for example, which I never enjoyed fighting against); the arising structures looked kind of Ruy-like and as such quite enjoyable to play. 
I'm not sure how to handle Dragon/e6 Sicilians (the latter I can probably handle since I play the Kan myself, but Dragon I'm a bit lost - I heard good things about the Levenfish, but I have no real clue how to play that or what it leads to) 

4) v French 
- Advance?
This is more going by exclusions; Nc3 always looked like Madness, Nd2 I am very unsure on. I used to play the exchange with 4.c4, but I'd rather not. While the advance is "giving Black exactly what he hopes for", it also seems to be the most topical approach, so it'd fit the "I want varying structures, where I learn as much as possible" approach the best.
Also, I occasionally land in this "by accident" with Black (as an ..e6 Sicilian player vs the Alapin), so getting some more practice in sure wouldn't hurt.

5) v Caro-Kann
- Panov?
I don't know a lot about this (other than hearing "Panov Endgame", which scarily sounds like there's some semi-forced variation where every piece gets exchanged?), but having an IQP variation in the repertoire seemed plausible. 

6) v Scandinavian
- ???
Literally no idea about this opening, just that it gave me headaches as a junior (but I still never worked on it because it almost never appeared  ). I figured 2. ..Qd5: 3.Nf3 would be a fun move to play that gets the opponent out of their comfort zone, don't know if this really exists. 
Really unsure (again) what to do against 2. ..Nf6; TN advised [3.Bb5+ Bd7 4.Be2 Nd5: 5.d4] with the idea that the Bd7 is just in Black's way, that looks quite decent?

7) v Alekhine
- ???
Again, no idea. I think I used to land in the Exchange by just playing what looked like the most natural moves to me (2.e5 Nd5 3.c4 Nb6 4.d4 d6), I don't know if there are better ideas.

8) v Pirc/Modern
- 150 Attack?
Simplest idea, most straightforward plans, and good. Austrian is too much hack, Bg5 doesn't work properly against the Modern (I think?), Bc4 isn't too threatening, so this is kinda left over.

9) v 1. ..Nc6
- ???
Does anyone really play this? I have never seen it on any board (let alone my own).

10) Did I miss something?

To recap, 
- I want to play the Ruy and the Open Sicilian (except perhaps 3.Bb5 against 2. ..Nc6), as those two are really the main reasons I got the idea to switch back to 1.e4; 
With the Ruy I'd like to avoid the Marshall, and with the Sicilian I'd like to avoid the craziest of sacsac-hopemate lines.
- I would prefer the Advance against the French, since it leads to the most topical pawn structure, and I sometimes "have to" play it as Black. If something really speaks against this I'll unhappily take a different line, but I hope it's fine.
- Against pretty much everything else I am unsure, both due to lack of experience and nothing quite "jumping out" as something I'd love to play (..which of course, might be due to my lack of knowledge), other than perhaps the Panov vs CK.

Sincerely thanking any and all pointers in Advance (and again, a big sorry if this has been debated to death and I was just unable to locate the respective threads!).