I wish someone told me this when I just started getting seriously into chess study. This entertaining game inspired me to share this thought with you, and maybe help someone who is just starting out. As far as I'm concerned, nobody should study opening theory until they are (at the very, very least) 1900 FIDE strength, and realistically probably more than that.
When I was a boy, I wasted so many hours memorising opening theory when my calculation and endgame technique were not on point, and working on them for just one fraction of the time I worked on openings would have been far more productive. Enjoy the game, hopefully you will gain something from the game itself and my thoughts, and I'd like to hear what the forum thinks too. Cheers!
All very true.
I disagree, as an 1800 fide, i lost most of my games due to opening problems, but once i learned some openings, i started winning more, or at leaast not losing out of the opening
Maybe a happy medium between not studying openings and studying them would be to familiarize yourself with some common opening traps, like those White can play with the QGA. Personally im a weak player, (around 1450-1500ish on a good day) and have studied openings the most. I've turned away from openings and have studied mostly tactics and endgames for the last several months, but my knowledge in my openings have helped me secure several wins.
I feel like you don't need opening theory until around 1500, after which you should start learning it, but once 1800 1900 or above should be studied a decent amount.
after this game of yours, i learned i Must destroy every pawn that moves past the center of board ,
I disagree. Perhaps, in this game, you did not need theory because your opponent was not playing theory. I mean, 4...a6??
Had they played more critical lines - e4 earlier, for example, White would have been quite worse.
It is unlikely that my success in chess can serve as an example. I did not specifically study openings, but I watched many games by good masters. In addition, in Russian chess textbooks there is always much written about the general principles of playing the opening, such as: development, capture by pawns in the center of the place, struggle with the pawn center, security of the king, and so on. If the author had in mind something similar, then I agree with him.
This is not a VanGeet opening according to stockfish but a bird's f4 opening/queenside fianchetto for white so there is an opening theory behind this, if i remember correctly there are 10 pages of opening lines and games in Taylor's book about Bird/Queenside fianchetto along with Normal,Antonishin,Leningrand,from gambit and a couple of other variations. White's plan in Bird is always the sterile plan of kingside/bayonet attack with f,g,h pawns so the 7..BxNf3 was a mistake. 7..Bf5 was better with queenside attack for black or 7..Bc8 retreat but u lose a tempo
btw Stockfish names black's Dutch/Leningrand variation only as Dutch. Something with the engine i dont know but clearly there is a problem in transpositions
Agreed. I only studied the very basics of the opening when I started to play chess and I would always play the King Pawn Opening no matter which colour pieces I had. Once I learned the basics of how to develop my pieces, I had to learn about how to keep my king safe and play in the middlegame. I barely learned about the endgame until I studied a chess book with lots of examples for all three stages of the game and all the tactics and strategy involved with each stage and my chess has improved a lot since then.