#5 " familiarize yourself with the common structures in your opening"
What if that would be the only interest one would have in reading or learning about opening knowledge a.k.a. "theory" in some chess circles (;))
Are there resource that focus on that aspect of openings and group openings by common structures more than by how they happen in the big opening tree. (I mean, could there be common structures across branches. different opening first moves, etc...).
Has there been such a systemic approach centered on structure similarity, irrespective of the move order differences, is another way to put it. I assume you meant common structures in the branch of the opening (including a certain amount of variations that would have commonalities).
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I am glad that I saved the pages with interesting posts. I also did overdo some of that post self-destruct. To the deleter, I will keep looking at your pointers. They should contain some elements useful to my understanding or curiosity as in my previous post.
I hope you don't mind if I use it as todo reminder somewhere else in lichess. Thank you.
#11 I don't know about a properly objectively systematic approach - I think the decision that two structures are properly distinct and not "basically the same with a few irrelevant differences" is a bit hard to define in really objective terms. In subjective terms, this is basically what books like Soltis's Pawn Structure Chess or Rios's Chess Structures do - the same structure can arise from multiple openings, the same opening can lead to a variety of structures and the transformation of structures into one another is important and not to be done carelessly.
IME this basic approach - "you play this opening, you'll probably see this structure a lot, the normal plans are this this and this" - is a very useful, concrete approach to strategy for intermediate players. It's obviously a blunt tool, but it's a really good starting point.
Chess is a deep dark forest where logic fails, darkness falls, doom is looming and quite a few other nasty things too ...
Make your way through and enter the land of light !
Hard does not mean impossible. We all know and are happy that chess is not a solved game. Because we can try, at every generation, to use onboard wet tools (i.e. our brains), and never get bored, as always new things to figure out. desert island: chess board!
I am just hardwired into inducing abstractions. Often these might look like caricatures at first, or might even offend some by their lack of nuance, but that is how I manage information overload. I start trying to find smaller amount of things to remember.
And then have to figure out, what thing goes with what experience context, so that means building a temporary map (in constant dialogue between deliberate conscious and subconscious). if not constant, up to mood swings.
I was not born with a good rote memory system, where repetition is enough to leave an impression (as repetition with me is error prone, as my eyes go blank, or find something more interesting to look at).
So. thanks for the help, and I also think that pawn structures, being the slowest of them all, and quite irreversible global time counters of any chess game (unless none is left), that would be the most stable ground to start building notions of similarity.
I had not not heard of Rios. The more subjectives, the more likely some objective can be deduced or induced, or at least some subconscious evolving version of that. My subjective out of many others' subjective. and if lucky, such things may be communicable, if useful, or prevalent enough. always up for re-testing by new chess territory, and note-taking about when they might fail...
#16 thanks for the blues. paradoxically uplifting.
"I did not even know, that 2.Bc4 has a name."
Yeah, I don't know who names all this stuff (or why). I do know I wouldn't particularly want that move named after me.
It also reminds me of something a GM said about going over the King's Gambit ancient archives...and being amazed that pretty much every var has its own name. :D
They serve as pointers and addresses, those names or the ECO classification, based on the move trees. I don't actually have a problem, with having such a communicable reference system. Just that I can't use that for my memory or learning ways. I need content based associations. And those aren't. But you are right. They could even use the defining move as name. Closer to tree content. Still missing the position information thought. and all the possible correlates that could help group many of them, and learn those groups, so that in any opening, one would actually have a direction system rather than a landmark system.
Like giving only geographical landmarks, to get somewhere in some road system. but no north south etc... Only, when at the red McDonald, and gas stations. turn right. then when you find a big water tower, you know that you have missed it. so actually it was at the two green houses that you had to turn the other way. The problem is that you already have to be on the correct path, for the indications to be helpful. While the other, perhaps with some sense of direction always recoverable, one could find their way, wherever they are dropped or got lost for a little while. An analogy, not to take every aspect of it as being the same. Just that the consequences might be.
"They could even use the defining move as name."
That's what I do. :)
