Does the Hipoótamo get included in that fianchetto section too ¿ What about the double fianchetto Hedgehog lines ¿

The Awerbach should be in that section too, since most people play it expressly to avoid the KID.

Glenn Flear writes:
Quote:


It's an interesting idea, and does make a lot of sense.

PatzerNoster wrote on 08/25/19 at 11:56:16:


Yes, that's true, it would risk annoying more subscribers than it pleased.

This all seems sensible yes.
I would agree with as Tony K suggests. Single Catalan / NID / QID / Bogo section, KID / Benoni section, two Sicilians etc.

Re: hiring, in my experience of this (I look after the p/t staff at my uni), more options is always better than fewer.

Personally, I like the idea of keeping two Open Sicilian sections, one with the Najdorf and the Schevy and one section with all the others - even now The Open Sicilian section often contains 80% or more Najdorfs anyway.
I also think that moving the Modern Benoni to the KID and maybe the Catalan to the Nimzo makes sense.
I'm open to all other sensible suggestions

Back to the ranch peeps. Back to the ranch.

1. Agree that change needed?
2. Suggest theory area combinations, total number of sections.

trw wrote on 08/19/19 at 00:53:54:

Fair enough, I agree that we've gone off topic. If a moderator wants to move these posts to another thread then I'm fully on board.
Interesting to hear your thoughts in regards to older correspondence games, I'll try to keep them in mind.

To be honest I don't think ICCF results seriously contradict the claim that the French and KID are only semi-correct openings. Almost no one claims that those openings are winning for white, merely that it is more difficult for black to prove equality there than in openings like the Berlin or the Grunfeld. And the statistics do support that claim. Comparing the KID to the Grunfeld, for example, white scores 56.5% after 3... Bg7 in 1759 games after 3... Bg7 compared to 53.6% after 3... d5 (restricting the filter to games from the 2017 archive or later where both players are above 2300). This is actually probably the most optimistic example I could give for black, since the Grunfeld doesn't score quite as well as the Nimzo, Semi-Slav, Marshall, Najdorf or Berlin and the KID scores better than the French. Those openings are played, as trw points out, to get winning chances rather than to equalise, and I suspect that most of those strong players would agree that the mainlines of those openings (along with others like the Caro-Kann, Taimanov Sicilian, Modern Benoni, Pirc etc.) offer black better winning chances than mainlines in the Marshall or Semi-Slav. There's a reason we see so many of those openings whenever the elites play sub 2600s in the Olympiad!
I'm a bit confused by trw's reference to games going back 30 years though. Especially in such 'spacebar-able' openings as the Dragon where I would have thought that theory changes at a very fast pace. Trw, do you think that these older games still have significant theoretical value? As an example, I would pretty much dismiss as theoretically irrelevant any game in the line 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 g6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7 7. f3 0-0 8. Qd2 Nc6 9. Bc4 Bd7 10. 0-0-0 Rc8 11. Bb3 Ne5, which was the absolute mainline back in the 1980s but nowadays seems basically refuted by 12. Kb1.