<Comment deleted by user>
what are the human limits in breadth (not just wide or narrow, but also depth)?
long term memory, short term memory, experience memory (intuition), rote memory, move motions sequence memory, position features to action patterns memory...
what is preparation versus knowledge and experience.. when does preparation start and when does it end.
I am completely ignorant, but found quite a few interesting questions. well really the one about wide versus narrow.. my other question just sprung out... I will never have to prepare, but i find all the out of the board study set of notions interesting from a somewhat theoretical point of view (not opening "theory", sorry that word is so overloaded).
long term memory, short term memory, experience memory (intuition), rote memory, move motions sequence memory, position features to action patterns memory...
what is preparation versus knowledge and experience.. when does preparation start and when does it end.
I am completely ignorant, but found quite a few interesting questions. well really the one about wide versus narrow.. my other question just sprung out... I will never have to prepare, but i find all the out of the board study set of notions interesting from a somewhat theoretical point of view (not opening "theory", sorry that word is so overloaded).
Or... you could focus on endgames instead.
I don't really agree with the premise.
I've always thought it odd how so many people nowadays are paranoid of "leaking prep" or publicising their online accounts. Granted, I live in an area where people generally don't prep for specific players very often, but even if they did, I have zero qualms with people inspecting my accounts front to back. I can play anything in a given situation, and I am also fully confident in my tournament repertoire and I have the flexibility to choose which sub-variation to play for a given game. In fact, I WANT people to scrutinize my account and give me a small challenge to work with.
Funny story actually: a few weeks ago I traveled to another province for a tournament, a region that is known to have "deep-preppers" compared to other parts of the country. In one of the rounds I faced a strong, 2300 CM who is especially serious about tournament prep—I even heard rumours about him creating files for the top 20 or so players in a standard, local Open Swiss prior to the event. Anyway, he seemed to be a lifelong 1.d4 player with little knowledge overall of 1.e4 structures, and he played 1.Nf3 against me on the board with the intention of getting me into a standard 1.d4 line without allowing any of the sidelines I occasionally play. What followed was a genius play (in my view) that completely dodged his preparation, all figured out on a whim at the board: I went 1...c5, inviting a Symmetrical English transposition (even though I never play this against 1.c4), but ultimately my opponent went into a Panov. Whether this was intentional or not, I wasn't sure, but he tanked in the opening for quite a while in one of the main tabiya positions, so that was already a success for me. He went on to play a very rare line instead of going into the Panov endgame, one of the few lines in the Caro for Black which I have studied extensively, and we just got a normal, open chess position which we were both fairly unfamiliar with.
I do agree that variety in your opening repertoire is important, but not necessarily for the reasons you describe. I believe it's important mostly from the perspective of structural understanding, as knowing more structures will give you the flexibility you need to figure stuff out over the board.
I've always thought it odd how so many people nowadays are paranoid of "leaking prep" or publicising their online accounts. Granted, I live in an area where people generally don't prep for specific players very often, but even if they did, I have zero qualms with people inspecting my accounts front to back. I can play anything in a given situation, and I am also fully confident in my tournament repertoire and I have the flexibility to choose which sub-variation to play for a given game. In fact, I WANT people to scrutinize my account and give me a small challenge to work with.
Funny story actually: a few weeks ago I traveled to another province for a tournament, a region that is known to have "deep-preppers" compared to other parts of the country. In one of the rounds I faced a strong, 2300 CM who is especially serious about tournament prep—I even heard rumours about him creating files for the top 20 or so players in a standard, local Open Swiss prior to the event. Anyway, he seemed to be a lifelong 1.d4 player with little knowledge overall of 1.e4 structures, and he played 1.Nf3 against me on the board with the intention of getting me into a standard 1.d4 line without allowing any of the sidelines I occasionally play. What followed was a genius play (in my view) that completely dodged his preparation, all figured out on a whim at the board: I went 1...c5, inviting a Symmetrical English transposition (even though I never play this against 1.c4), but ultimately my opponent went into a Panov. Whether this was intentional or not, I wasn't sure, but he tanked in the opening for quite a while in one of the main tabiya positions, so that was already a success for me. He went on to play a very rare line instead of going into the Panov endgame, one of the few lines in the Caro for Black which I have studied extensively, and we just got a normal, open chess position which we were both fairly unfamiliar with.
I do agree that variety in your opening repertoire is important, but not necessarily for the reasons you describe. I believe it's important mostly from the perspective of structural understanding, as knowing more structures will give you the flexibility you need to figure stuff out over the board.
I originally planned to be a "Sicilian Main" but now think that is too much work. I plan to only play Sveshnikov for life now and add a couple jukes such as playing both Bg7 and f5 vs Bxf6 gx and playing both Nb1 and Ne7 vs Caruana 7. Nd5.
Same with Nimzo I am not touching anything else but will add some jukes to my Nimzo over time.
I plan to make alts in the future but I actually hope my opponents find my 15k game chesscom account and prep vs it as I completely changed openings around queens gambit.
Same with Nimzo I am not touching anything else but will add some jukes to my Nimzo over time.
I plan to make alts in the future but I actually hope my opponents find my 15k game chesscom account and prep vs it as I completely changed openings around queens gambit.
For most of us we don't have to have opening preparation against others-usually above 1600 we already have plans against each opening and under 2200 don't really change anything if we know who opponent is. Still, great blog, thanks!
Openings are important don’t think they should scare you tbh if openings were the only thing in chess what about tactics endgames positional play? Even unprep b3 leads to nice positions but yea of beat openings are ok but I’m not fan of openings should scare people because honestly no one cares about openings for non pro chess players!
@pd159 said in #5:
> I do agree that variety in your opening repertoire is important, but not necessarily for the reasons you describe. I believe it's important mostly from the perspective of structural understanding, as knowing more structures will give you the flexibility you need to figure stuff out over the board.
I would agree from a non tournament but learning about chess mechanics perspective, but do you learn such things in the context of "preparation" which i still am not sure about what it really means.. or the extent to what it could mean.
What is the difference between non-preparation study or training, without no players opponent specific pool in mind (e.g. tournament), playing non-tournament rated games, and preparation for a specific pairing or tournament restricted expected parings.
The blog first question of narrow or wide is actually a general one, and can still apply to the "set" of structure you might have in mind in that quote. It can apply outside of repertoire preparation, about chess learning in general..
What are the best distributions over a person time budget from minutes to years, of experience or study efforts in terms of narrow tree exploration or wide... to which i add depths for a total of breadth. I am also adding the time scale factor. Alternance could be a thing, if adjusted to cognitive or psychological rhythms across various time scales known to be characteristics of various memory or learning processes... That is why i wonder when does preparation start and when it ends.
what is the difference between general learning about chess and preparation? (i am not having no clue, but since i am actually only reading second hand about this, I ask here). Is it like cramming for an exam? does it improve long term play abilities...
I think the learning of the structures, which are things than can be decided upon, in-game without specific move to move alternance pre-game (close to game) targeted exposure or study, is something that is not specific to "preparation", if only i could be sure of what that means... I would feel confident make that statement.. for now i throw all of this post as hypothesis from afar.
> I do agree that variety in your opening repertoire is important, but not necessarily for the reasons you describe. I believe it's important mostly from the perspective of structural understanding, as knowing more structures will give you the flexibility you need to figure stuff out over the board.
I would agree from a non tournament but learning about chess mechanics perspective, but do you learn such things in the context of "preparation" which i still am not sure about what it really means.. or the extent to what it could mean.
What is the difference between non-preparation study or training, without no players opponent specific pool in mind (e.g. tournament), playing non-tournament rated games, and preparation for a specific pairing or tournament restricted expected parings.
The blog first question of narrow or wide is actually a general one, and can still apply to the "set" of structure you might have in mind in that quote. It can apply outside of repertoire preparation, about chess learning in general..
What are the best distributions over a person time budget from minutes to years, of experience or study efforts in terms of narrow tree exploration or wide... to which i add depths for a total of breadth. I am also adding the time scale factor. Alternance could be a thing, if adjusted to cognitive or psychological rhythms across various time scales known to be characteristics of various memory or learning processes... That is why i wonder when does preparation start and when it ends.
what is the difference between general learning about chess and preparation? (i am not having no clue, but since i am actually only reading second hand about this, I ask here). Is it like cramming for an exam? does it improve long term play abilities...
I think the learning of the structures, which are things than can be decided upon, in-game without specific move to move alternance pre-game (close to game) targeted exposure or study, is something that is not specific to "preparation", if only i could be sure of what that means... I would feel confident make that statement.. for now i throw all of this post as hypothesis from afar.
Multi-time control players sometimes use different repertoires depending on the time control they play (i.e ignominious tricks for bullets and safer lines for blitz). Though it's not only a pragmatical decision made to optimize results, it's also about do you want to be highly specialised or to have a wide understanding of chess.