The importance of opening preparation: the Englund Gambit
I play in a couple of internet tournament leagues and try to make a habit of doing at least some opening preparation against my opponents before the game*. Common sense, I think. Usually, it just confirms that I’m in for a normal game, and gives me an idea of where to concentrate any drilling. But yesterday, it saved my ass, because my opponent played a very refutable, but nevertheless tricky gambit against 1. d4 called the Englund Gambit — 1. d4 e5.
Fortunately, because I was doing opening prep, I knew that he liked to play it, and I spent the hour before the game learning all about it from this awesome YouTube video. Black’s basic idea is to immediately create an open, tactical game, avoiding closed, positional play as it typical with 1. d4. And the opening has a bunch of traps, which, unless White plays precisely, will lead to tragic material loss.
So let’s say that White accepts the gambit (as he should). Black is going to immediately attack the pawn, usually with 2…Nc6, but also sometimes with 2…Qe7. In the latter case, a trap is already being set: if White defends the pawn with 3. Bf4, 3…Qb4+ is going to triple-attack the pawn on b2, the king and the bishop. 4. Qd2 looks like a good response, covering the bishop and blocking the check, but after 4…Qxb2 5. Qc3 (trying to save the cornered rook) Bb4, White can resign: his queen is pinned and lost, and the rook’s not going to make it either.
So White’s better off playing 2. Nf3 in all cases, avoiding this mess. Black will play 2…Qe7, preparing the same basic idea and now 3. Bf4 (or 3. Bg5, according to the computer) is possible. White will try the same trick: 3…Qb4+. Instead of playing the queen to d2, White needs to simply drop the bishop back with 4. Bd2, blocking the check and threatening the queen, who will respond with 4…Qxb2, threatening the Ra1.
How to respond? The wrong response is 5. Bc3, although it looks good at first. After 5…Bb4 6. Qd2 (6. Bxb4 Nxb4 and White has to give up the Nb1 to defend the rook) 6…Bxc3 7. Qxc3, Black has 7…Qc1#. Whatever happens, Black is winning.
So 5. Nc3 is White’s only response here, defending the rook with the queen and blocking the b4-e1 diagonal with another piece. Whew. It doesn’t end there, though… Next comes 5…Nb4, threatening 6…Nxc2+, where White’s only legal move is to give up the queen… This is easily prevented by 6. Nd4. Black can now respond with 6…c5 (6…a6 is also possible — you can learn about that in the video), and the defense of the c2 square is in dire straits. If White moves the knight, he loses his queen. What to do?
7. Rb1 and Black is now royally screwed. The queen has to retreat with 7…Qa3, and now White has threats of his own. 8. Ndb5 threatens the rook on a8 (and the Qa3) and gets his knight out of take. After 8…Qa5, White has several options, such as 9. a3 Nc6 10. Nd5 with a brutal discovered attack on the queen, or 9. e4, freeing the light-squared bishop and preparing some activity in the center. Black is going to lose material.
So here’s the game, with a few annotations. The beginning should be pretty familiar.
Anyway, I hope this helps someone else who has to face this gambit, and inspires a few people to add opening prep to their pre-game ritual.
* How to get your opponent’s games: On ICC, typing the ‘history <opponentname>’ command, or using the team4545league.org website (all league games are archived — just click on your opponent’s name to see them) will get you a list of your opponent’s game. For Playchess, you need Chessbase (Fritz doesn’t offer this feature). After logging onto the server, you can get a database of recent games for any player on the server.
Change, of course! (redux)
Just a short note today, to point out the updated statistics on the sidebar — my ICC score has finally started moving (in the right direction). I’ve jumped up about 150 points on ICC in the last two weeks, which brings my rating up from Suckbottom Swamp to the outer burbs of Suckville. Mount Mediocrity, here I come…
So what’s my secret? Well, I’m glad you asked. First, the simple answer: I spent the last week concentrating on playing (at least one 30/30 game a day, often two, as possible), easy tactics (using Elementary Combinations from ChessOK and Ivashchenko’s Manual of Chess Combinations, Volume 1B) and board vision training (using Chess Trainer (cvt.jar) — I’m currently just drilling square colors).
Of all of that, I tend to think that the playing is helping me the most, since I tend to get really rusty, both in terms of opening preparation and psychologically, when I don’t play for a few days. But it’s not just the amount I’m playing, it’s the extra time I’m taking each move to analyze my opponent’s plans and threats, and to double-check my move candidates, that they don’t allow any tactics. The simple tactics certainly help with this as well, since I’m more worried about accidentally walking into a fork or a pin by misplacing a piece than into some complex combination. Anyway, as far as thought process goes, I’m not always successful, but new habits have to be built step by step. But that’s the more complex answer, which is maybe just as simple: I’m thinking a little better and not making as many game-killing mistakes.
I’ve managed to catch a cold, just in time for a rare sunny weekend, so I might need to take a little break from playing until I’m feeling clear-headed again (no Playing While Tired©!).
This week in blogging and training: I’m working through a small Lilov backlog at the moment, but I’m hoping to post at least one self-analysis this week. If there’s time for Nimzo, I’ll do that, as well. Otherwise, I’m back to chesstempo (did my first 30 minutes there today since about a week and regained about half of the points I lost 2 weeks ago), I’ll be continuing with the easy tactics, playing and chess vision stuff. I’m also working on my opening repertoire a bit, but more on that in another post.
Change of course
How do we handle frustration? It’s not like I’ve been doing nothing the last several weeks. I’ve been reading, doing tactics, playing, everything possible in the time available. And nevertheless, I see my rating dropping, my tactical vision dimming, my patience thinning…
So what to do? I tend to try to address problems head-on, and so I’ve been trying like crazy to invent a method to pull myself out of the slump. In vain. But now I think I’ve got something. Bear with me, it’s a bit of a long post.
In a conversation with Valeri Lilov the other day, he suggested I lay off on the “hard tactics” for a few days and concentrate on basic tactics. So I fired up Peshka + “Elementary Combinations” and have been doing about 75 ELO-1000-to-1500-rated problems at a sitting, using the “Test” feature of the software (basically, I just get a random selection from all of the tactical themes). “Sharpening” he calls it. This is good, light exercise for tactical toning, and my brain seems to like it.
The other thing we discussed are my two major problems as a player: passivity and underestimation of my opponent’s resources. When I don’t really know what to do, I tend to make passive moves (just don’t screw anything up!), rather than finding challenging moves, or at least moves which further a strategic plan. This is kind of bad. Underestimation of my opponent’s resources is much worse. I often miss tactical options for my opponent, or simple defensive resources which hinder my “great idea”. Egotism is the “deadly chess sin” in question, in the world according to Rowson.
In a conversation the other day about “thought process”, I was given a schematic for “how to think, every time it’s your move,” and I’m giving it a try. If you’ve ever listened to Dan Heisman‘s great lectures on ICC, it won’t be too earth-shattering: analyze your opponent’s move & threats, responding if necessary; consider tactical (forced) options, executing if available; consider strategic options; given a move candidate with a non-forced reply, analyze your opponent’s tactical options after the move — if it’s safe, do it, if not, find a safe candidate or consider a different strategic goal.
There’s a lot more to it, and this is the subject for at least its own post, but that’s the basic outline, and it should hopefully address the two weaknesses I mentioned above. It comes down to discipline: can I discipline my thinking in this fashion? Can I make it habitual?
In the last couple of days, I’ve been experimenting — I’ve played 7 30/30 games in the last 2 days, mostly against similarly-rated opponents on ICC (i.e. 1100 standard rating or so — low). The result: 5 wins, and my rating is edging over 1200 now. The two losses were both bad blunders, one a case of chess blindness (I hung my queen), the other a case where I didn’t consider my (very annoying, chatty) opponent’s tactical shots before making the move. And the wins aren’t particularly brilliant, blunder-free, or impressive — but they’re mostly convincing. It’s only been two days, so it’s too early to draw conclusions, but it seems like a good experiment to continue.
Apropos Rowson, I’ve been reading “Chess for Zebras“, after seeing a comment from Dan Heisman on his website about it. The initial section is devoted to questions of learning and improvement. Rowson is convinced that “knowledge”, in the sense of information gained through study, is not particularly useful for chess improvement — sure, it doesn’t hurt to know strategic ideas, historical games, opening theory, etc. — it can only help, but learning that stuff won’t help you get better at playing.
Rowson posits that the “how” is much more important than the “what”. That “doing” is more important than “knowing”. So, I can read Nimzowitsch, Suba (I’ve given up on Suba for now — I just don’t find the time or energy for so many books at once — but I’ll come back to it), even Rowson as much as I want. It won’t help me play better chess, any more than reading Keyboard magazine will make me a better pianist. Doing is the key, and as such, I’m announcing a slight change of course.
So my new study plan involves, in this order:
- fast, light tactics — at least 75 problems a day in less than a half-hour
- lots of 30/30 games with an emphasis on thought process — I’m shooting for at least 1 a day, but 2 is better
- slow, heavier tactics as possible — every other day or so for about 30 minutes
- opening review
- reading/video/game study/endgames when I don’t feel like any of the above
How does that sound?