This morning I decided to tally my tournament results for the year 2009, breaking them down according to whether I was White or Black and according to the level of opposition. The results, I think you will agree, are rather surprising:
| Against Masters | Against Exp/Below | TOTAL | |
| w/ White | +1 -7 =3 (23%) | +5 -4 =1Â Â (55%) | +6 -11 =4 (38%) |
| w/ Black | +3 -3 =1 (50%) | +8 -1 =1 Â Â (85%) | +11 -4 =2 (71%) |
| TOTAL | +4 -10 =4 (33%) | +13 -5 =2 (70%) | +17 -15 =6 (53%) |
I was aware during the year that I was doing badly with White and very well with Black. But I did not know the disparity was so extreme! I thought it was just because in most of my tournaments I happened to play White against the good players and Black against the weaker players. However, what the table shows is that the rating didn’t matter: no matter whether I was playing against a master or against a non-master, I still did way better with Black!
I’m not really sure how to explain it. Either my White openings are bad, or my psychology with White is bad. Or, just possibly, I was really unlucky with White this year.
What should I do about it? One extreme possibility might be to play 1. e3 on the opening move, with the idea of responding to 1. … e5 with 2. e4, thereby transposing to Black! I’m not sure I am willing to take it to that extreme, however …
A better idea would probably be to have more balance between 1. e4 and 1. d4. I have played 1. e4 exclusively since 2000. Jesse Kraai often talks admiringly about young players like Magnus Carlsen who are equally at home playing both of those opening moves. It would not be too much trouble to emulate them. The problem is just that I like most e4 openings better than most d4 openings. But liking does not necessarily translate to good results. If I can win more often with 1. d4, I ought to play it, whether I like it or not. It will also be good for my general chess understanding to see different kinds of positions.
It’s great that I got to play 38 rated games this year. I think that is close to the busiest year I’ve ever had. However, I now have a huge backlog of tournament games that I have not studied carefully. One of my principles for years has been to study EVERY tournament game I play, win or lose. But I am now 32 games in arrears! To catch up, I will have to analyze them more selectively. Probably I should study all the games with masters, plus the most important or interesting or puzzling non-master games.
