pinky wrote on 02/14/20 at 15:56:49:


My friend, there is no absolute scientific method that is foolproof, were it so we would all be GM's. Strong players, mainly through trial and error eventually discover what works best for them and go from there. At your level it is more important to play a lot to learn your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. To this end choose opponents slighter better than yourself and also slightly worse, review the games and draw some conclusions. 

I do not know the reason for your infatuation with this 6.Bd3 line, quite frankly the line looks like rubbish to me, and yes I know that very strong players probably use it, but my answer to that is so what, and the same goes for the equally ridiculous 6.h4. You may ask why then would strong players consider such lines in their Opening prep and Repertoires, the answer is manifold, but here are a couple:

A) Psychological - Through studying a line the player discovers a move that turns out not to be as stupid as it looks, and while it leads to no objective advantage it is likely to produce an over reaction from the opponent and or force them to think on their own.

B) Practical - If you come up with a fresh or rarely used idea, it is unlikely anyone will have any deep prep against it. The idea need not be great, it simply needs to be playable.

To prepare any opening properly strong players need a full overview of it, typical middle and endgames arising from it, recurring tactical patterns and strategic plans. For this you need many model games, say about a 100. Then you have to play the line against sparring partners to develop a feel for the play, and determine if the character of the positions suit you. Such understanding is vital for success, you will learn when typical ideas are likely to fail or succeed and when some positions are objectively better for one side, but easier to play for another.

On a personal note, Bobby Fischer and Mikhail Tal were my role models starting out, I studied the complete annotated games of Fischer and Tal's 1960 wch match against Botvinik, the latter of which gives very intimate incites into the complicated world of opening prep. I developed a love and understanding for the King's Indian primarily from these players, but at the same time I discovered the Najdorf was not for me as I did not like the positions arising from the Poisoned Pawn despite Fischer's success with it. Later I discovered it was not simply the PP I didn't like, but any opening that conceded an initiative on my King for the sake of pawn grabbing.

I forgot to mention that strong players mainly use engines to blunder check their analysis and to find tactical resources both offensively and defensively in lines they want to play. Much more could be said on this topic, but I hate typing long posts and besides, more than enough useful advice has already been shared in this thread. Just remember that in Chess like most things, you must learn to crawl before you can walk, and try not to overthink it so much.

Good luck and enjoy the journey.

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 02/14/20 at 17:28:11:

It is much worse. CB and in consequence its followers were developed by people having a marketing tool with Kasparow. They made it a tool for an absolute top player and this has never been redesigned for low level and average players.
A GM can skip through twenty and more games in an hour and sees what is new, what his possible opposition prefers, ... A club player cannot do this, a beginner should not even try it.

Databases are good for collecting information. Producing useful output is something else.

@pinky

As child and long time later I had the same idea: I get a position, there are five or more moves possible. Prepare those.

And I drowned in the lines.

You have a human mind (probably  ) and this is different to IT-logic. You must learn where to put pieces in this Najdorf-line. This means to understand what activ ideas your opponent has, what active ideas you have. If you analyze a game, own played or read somewhere, do it like Victor Bologan recommended following his trainer. Write down three points you found interesting or learned from this game. Three!!!! You want to start with 5 moves leading to more questions each. This is nothing a human can digest.

Far from any esoterical or religious believes: Accept you're human in learning chess.

I am re-framing my question instead of creating a new thread.

I wish to know how the pros prepare openings. By pros I mean titled players, or those who take chess as a career.

General opening preparation as well as preparing against an opponent. I am aware of preparing against opponent as I read the relevant material through various sources. Not that I know! It is just that I have no confusion in the process.

I am curious on how the pros build their repertoire, in chessbase or notes or whatever. How they do research, how they use the engines.

I am interested to know the step by step method, scientific approach if they follow. It would be great if some insights are shared.

@an ordinary chessplayer It's a great book! I couldn't take my eyes off it. Bareev is cultured and philosophical (if in a slightly bitter Russian way). It really conjures up a vivid picture of the experience of a world championship match.

@pinky They memorize moves, sometimes long tactical sequences of forced and semi-forced moves. However, they see the moves in large chunks the way a pianist sees a whole sequence of notes as a single riff, and they can often work out some of the details at the board if they remember the general direction and evaluation of the sequence. Furthermore, they understand the point of each move in the form of a variety of unstated common strategical and tactical ideas. Say they memorize Qb3 in some 1.d4 d5 opening. They see immediately, or rather know automatically, that Qb3 will attack the opponent's d-pawn and b-pawn, that it may be answered by ...Qb6, that if it is, the queens are in a face-off where either can initiate a capture, that unless they can exchange off the opponent' c-pawn first, whoever takes will only seem to damage the opponent's pawns but in fact may give the opponent better play; and they know in general how to execute that play: advance the doubled pawn at good moment--they know they will be able to tell what moment is good, etc.

Now, all that the opening book may say on that move is "Qb3"--that's it--and the response ...Qb6 may not even be mentioned because White could play dxc5 followed by ...Qxb6 axb6, creating truly bad double isolated pawns. Or  if White can't do this, then...Qb6 may be given with a few following moves where no queen trade happens, because initiating a queen trade helps the other player's game here. The pro player memorizes Qb3 and understands that it implies all the above, since "every Russian schoolboy knows." What is meant by many subsequent moves is similarly unstated.

The book gives a few moves, the pro remembers them, and this huge context is implied--the book doesn't bother to explain it. When a beginner reads the same book, he memorizes Qb3 and the next few moves in the book, but on playing it is immediately faced with his opponent's response ... Qb6 that the book, for good reason, didn't mention. He doesn't see---how could he--that he should give up his strong center pawn with ...dxc5 now. Instead, he plays something else normal, like Bd3. Then the opponent, also a beginner, plays ...Qxb3, not knowing that that is considered a mistake, and the first beginner, also unaware of this, says "zut! now I have to double my pawns when I recapture." He doesn't know that these doubled pawns are actually good because he can advance the front pawn all the way to b5, trade, and attack the Black b-pawn from the now-open a-file. So he plays something else, and eventually one player hangs a piece and loses.

Now, what did he get out of reading, memorizing, and playing the move Qb3, as the pro did? He didn't know why he "should" play the move, couldn't capitalize on his opponent's mistaken response, and the game was always destined to be decided by one or more much bigger mistakes in the middlegame and endgame anyway. In fact, he shouldn't play the book move. He should play a less complicated idea, drawn from his very own head, that he understands and knows how to use, like developing a knight with Nf3.

I haven't seen From London to Elista. I will have to check it out.

There's a time to study openings, and there's a time to work on other parts of the game. Most people, not just beginners, spend way too much time on the openings. Certainly I did, for too many years.

Still, I thought the OP asked an interesting technical question. The replies given are correct, but they don't answer the question....

1050 is approximately the (USCF) rating I got from my first tournament, decades ago.  I suppose it gives an indication of my level of understanding at the time that, as I recall, I played this as White:  1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Bxf7+.

pinky wrote on 02/12/20 at 07:31:21:

By "pro" I think you mean GM, although they are not strictly synonymous.

Anyway, there are two parts to this: (A) general opening knowledge; (B) specific opening preparation. Pros already have a lot of A, and spend almost all their current time on B. Amateurs need to do the opposite. You may still wish to know how to do B, one simple way to find out would be to pay a pro to show you their method. I don't think you can expect any pros to explain it here on chesspub. Some non-pros have quite elaborate methods of opening preparation. I would be wary. I'm not sure how effective their methods are, compared to the actual methods used by the pros.

pinky wrote on 02/12/20 at 07:31:21:

• Before you start, you need a repertoire. TopNotch gave some ideas where to get one.
• Then you create one or more personal repertoire databases, with your bare lines. There is no point to importing a bunch of lines that you haven't looked at. Keep it minimal to start and grow the repertoire organically.
• From your big database, select a manageable set of games from the line that interests you, and play through them fairly quickly, just to see typical ideas. You may add some of these variations to your repertoire database, if they are instructive or thematic.
• Play some practice games in the same opening. (This is your step "1)".) I don't know how much value there is to playing practice games against the computer. Computers cheat by having an opening book to look at. You should try to practice against the type and level of opponent you will face in your competitive tournament games, although a slightly stronger level is helpful. As you already know, analyze these games to see where you went wrong, and put that in your repertoire database as well.
• Go through The Week in Chess, looking for new ideas both in your repertoire and outside it.

The kinds of information you want in your repertoire database are:

• Moves and lines that are frequently played by the types of opponents you will be facing. These moves are usually not the same ones the pros play.
• Traps. You shouldn't play for traps, but if they arise in the natural course of play, then you want to know about them.
• Thematic play. What you are looking for are games where one side plays weakly or passively, and the other side gets "everything".
• Moves and lines that are recommended against your repertoire in various places, e.g. in repertoire books for the other side. These will typically lead you into ...
• Critical positions. For your purposes, critical positions are those where both sides have played the best moves, and you aren't quite sure what to do for your side. Spend some time with the computer on these positions, come up with something, and try out your idea in practice games.

You might notice that I didn't mention anything about your step "2)". I really think you should skip it.

One of the joys of openings is finding something that everyone else thinks is bad, but you think is good. One of the annoyances of openings is when your opponent plays what is "according to theory" a 2nd or 3rd-rate move, and you can't figure out what's wrong with it. These are precisely the kinds of information you can't find in 2500 vs 2500 databases.