Count me in for Green Eggs and Ham, Sam-I-Am! Happy New Year to all!

"I would not play it with a pawn,
with AliReza in Iran.
I will not play it in a hall--
I will not play ...d5 at all.
I won't play ...d5 in a box.
I will not try it with a fox.
I would not play it in a house,
Nor will I play it with a mouse.
I will not play it here or there,
I will not play it anywhere!
I WILL NOT PLAY GREEN EGGS AND HAM!
I DO NOT LIKE IT, SAM-I-AM."

Sam-I-am:
"You do not like ...d5, you say.
Try it! Try it! And you may.
Try it and you may, I say."

Thanks for the response. That's very interesting I play the same openings with Black and very similar lines with White (except for the Bb5 Sicilian)

ReneDescartes wrote on 01/01/22 at 04:55:17:


- You have to admit that a chess player over the board is not a scientist. I said that the 2 method share a lot like logical thinking, reliance on facts, careful calculation of moves etc... but there's a lot more intuition in chess compared to science. And you take decision with a lot less information in chess. Computer use the scientific method in chess for example.

- No, it's not really a matter of taste. I have a simple objective : playing for the win with black without having to go into bad position. To achieve that I laid out 4 prerequisite : 

- assymetrical structure (in every line)
- max white advantadge at 0.5 (in every line)
- Closed/semi-closed
- no dry ending/dry position/forced draws

You can say that the fact that I want to play for the win with black every game is a matter of taste but those are just prerequisite to do that. 

Imagine you were advising kramnik at the end of one of his world championship.
When he had black and he had to win.
Or caruana at the end of the candidates a few years ago.
Did they play the slav or the ruy lopez with black ?
No they played the najdorf, the classical sicilian, the benoni. 

A lot of grandmaster also say that when they must win in an open they choose the dutch.

I understand that you don't like my absolutist approach, of course winning and losing depends on a lot more stuff. 

But you gotta create your opportunities, to have the most winning chances with black might as well play uncompromising defense. That's what GM do when their back is against the wall.

"In every game..."--forget it. No serious player thinks he will get a certain broad type of game from his repertoire every game--only in a good majority of games.

- You should try uncompromising defense you'll see that you can play for the win all the time. Do you question your ability to play for the win with white ? It's just natural. I'm not asking for the moon like only gambit style or only closed style, or only endgame etc.. Of course you can't do that. The only thing I want for my opening (and my analysis of every sub-variation must prove it) is an ability to play for the win.

Might as well not play if I can't play for the win. 

An 0.5 evaluation limit is pointless by itself. Computer evaluations require human interpretation; advantages are meaningless unless their possessor can come up with a reasonable approach to the position.

- Of course that's absolutely true. That's why players were playing dodgy stuff in the last century. That's why you can get away with weird setup as a surprise weapon. But I'm talking about my final repertoire that my opponent will prepare against. 
Nowaday except in the king's indian if you got a 0.8 advantage in your prep you can work and understand your advantages. You can then crush your opponent dodgy defense.

Imagine I would have taken up the benoni as my main weapon for example :



This has been a dodgy benoni setup for a long time now. Gm don't believe in it and computer is not so kind either. 

Here the theory has been Na6 for a long time but Bxa6! is +1 and doesn't look very appealing as a black player.

I don't want my opponent to stumble into that when they prepare against me. 

Hence the "no more than -0.5 line"

I know my whole repertoire by heart there's nothing like that in the leningrad for example.

To prevent White from playing for a draw is, as the basis of a repertoire, silly. In certain tournament situations it is possible, but everyone knows you pay a substantial price.

- You'll lose more but you'll also win more it's a question of style. Of course if you're talking about players that play opening like the alekhine, the benko, the winaver, the classical dutch etc..
It's only normal there's hole in those opening. A little bad luck and your opponent will find them.
I really think there's nothing wrong with playing good dynamic opening.
And if possible multiple to avoid being a human target like MVL.

Finally, absolutely avoiding the Benoni, or avoiding drawish exchange variations, can be done; absolutely avoiding attacking the king, or avoiding dry positions, or avoiding complications, or avoiding endgames, cannot.

I know don't worry. I get where you're coming from as a coach and it's true taht uncompromising player like me tend to avoid certain type of position. But I worked a lot on my endgame in the last decade and play them every time I see "possibilities" in them.

With white I play the exchange variation of the ruy lopez. The endgame is very interresting to me. I'm pressing.



With black I play this for example in the Kid :



Or this in the grunfeld :



But I'm sorry with black I'll never enter simple ending like the one you enter in the 8.Bb5+ grunfeld :



As a surprise, or against a bad endgame player why not. But against good players that knows their endgame ? I don't see how you can win this with black.

That's the type of position I'm talking about when I say "dry ending". I have nothing against ending in general. Interresting ending, ending with imbalance, ending where white has suffered some loss of tempo, ending where I have the open file, a queenside majority etc...

I need something ^^ lol

We have tried to show you ways to gain space in your home--the Nimzo-Ragozin, the Triangle, the Modern--but we bump into your quixotic walls.

- The triangle is almost a good dynamic opening I'll have to analyze more lines but it could be another weapon.
So don't worry your pleas didn't fall on deaf ears.
I'm always open to new suggestions.

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 01/01/22 at 05:31:31:


I adopt this approach with white lol

I try to win even in the most dead position.

But I really believe in my openings. I never play dodgy stuff. I think one of the reasons why you were losing was the unsound nature of your repertoire. 

Maybe the more I go up the more I become MVL 2.0 and only play the grunfeld and the najdorf because they are the only "absolutely correct" one.

I'll still take your advice into account because this hasn't yet happened to me, I don't know what I'm talking about maybe.

I've always had better result with black.

Based on personal experience, for ages now I have advocated the Green Eggs and Ham method. Just try an opening, you might like it! Instead of rejecting openings based on intuition, which can be dangerously akin to prejudice, I think it's better to adopt a more experimental approach.

You see, once upon a time I also played only for the win with black, so it was King's Indian, Dutch, Benoni, and so forth. As my typical opponents became stronger, my results against 1.d4 became very bad. Calculations showed that if I drew every game against 1.d4 (drawing against lower-rateds also), my rating would go up. So as a stop-gap solution, I took up the Tarrasch Defense. I did much better than draw every game, and my rating went way up! This was a real eye-opener for me. If you do serious homework in classical openings, it's possible to win in drawish lines. Just because it's equal and dry doesn't mean you have to shake hands. Keep working at the board, keep fighting, there are just as many points to be won in the endgame as in the opening. Your opponent is not an engine! Another point is that it's actually less work to grind out the occasional win in an equalish endgame than it is to grovel for a half point in some dynamic opening gone bad.

Perhaps you are confusing the English word "analysis" with the word "analogy." They have little to do with each other. "Analysis" always implies a strictly logical approach (except, perhaps, in clinical psychology). In chess, analysis denotes careful, concrete calculation of moves sequences and is, if anything, the opposite of intuition--though of course the two cannot really be separated.

Anyway, in choosing openings your so-called analytic method is--not a method. Viewed as a method, its principles would be laziness and willfull ignorance. (I do not say these characterize you.) The real justification for your approach is that choosing a repertoire is like building a home--a personal matter of taste and comfort.

But there is one more consideration--people like conceptual castles and imagine that certain principles, really vain and arbitrarily walls of air, are what is making their structure hold up. You have told us some of your criteria. You are certainly entitled to them. For this very reason, however, we cannot help you. You have boxed yourself into an unnecessarily narrow space with a set of fanciful requirements.

"In every game..."--forget it. No serious player thinks he will get a certain broad type of game from his repertoire every game--only in a good majority of games. Again, An 0.5 evaluation limit is pointless by itself. Computer evaluations require human interpretation; advantages are meaningless unless their possessor can come up with a reasonable approach to the position. To prevent White from playing for a draw is, as the basis of a repertoire, silly. In certain tournament situations it is possible, but everyone knows you pay a substantial price. Finally, absolutely avoiding the Benoni, or avoiding drawish exchange variations, can be done; absolutely avoiding attacking the king, or avoiding dry positions, or avoiding complications, or avoiding endgames, cannot. It is more or less obvious that your game is lacking in some important respects. This is true of most class players, but most do not expect their repertoires to cover for it completely.

We have tried to show you ways to gain space in your home--the Nimzo-Ragozin, the Triangle, the Modern--but we bump into your quixotic walls. These, not the suggestions or the possibilities, are the real problem.The real solution--the only one I would ever recommend as a coach--is to develop a degree of competence in and tolerance for dry positions, not least so you can build a proper fighting repertoire.

It's concepts I created myself, but roughly speaking :

- The scientific method is the method of reflexion, of problem resolution used by scientific. Trial and error, reproducibility, no reliance on intuition. But also logical analysis, hypothesis, empirism etc... (these one are shared with the chess analysis method) If you picture a researcher that's what I'm talking about : his method.

- The chess analysis method is a bit different. Picture a chess master, how he find the right move. He rely on intuition, he doesn't follow an exact method (unlike what kotov was saying), but still he is logical, lay hypothesis and always follow the truth and the facts. But for example in the chess analysis method you don't have to prove how you got to your results to your peers, you also don't have to test every possibility just finding a good one is enough. The chess analysis method is more intuitive and faster. 

Ultimately the scientific method is more reliable but maybe sometime facing very difficult problem a chess approach is better. And of course a lot of other time if you can believe in yourself it's way faster.

If the scientific really wanted to create a vaccine in 3 month for example they could have done it with this method. 

EDIT : The chess analysis method doesn't prove anything and it's not its intention. It's just there to find the right "move". To hell with justification ^^ If it's right it's right. Proving it can be a waste of time sometimes.