There’s nothing like a little blog debate to start the year! Dennis Monokroussos, on his “Chess Mind” blog, has posted a rebuttal to “Dana’s Opening Philosophy.” Please go over there and check it out (and then come back here!).
I have to say that the first part of Dennis’s rejoinder puzzled me a bit. He was responding to axiom one of my philosophy, which says, “Opening theory is a scam! For anyone rated under 2200, that is, and probably even for anyone rated under 2400.” Dennis seems to take this axiom as meaning that you shouldn’t take opening theory seriously, and then he argues that I disprove my own statement by urging readers to do their own opening research, which certainly does mean taking opening theory seriously.
In response, I can see that a couple of things got muddled in my post, and that means I should have expressed myself better. First, the “not taking it seriously” part refers to a quote from Jesse Kraai’s training program. He made a very detailed program of what you should study at what points in your chess development, he says that when you reach 2400, “Now is the time to start taking openings seriously.”
To clarify what I mean and what Jesse means, I think we need to discriminate between two things: opening theory and Opening Theory. The first refers to the general principles of openings and the specific lines that I hope you will study and create on your own. I do think it’s important to have an idea of what you want to accomplish in the opening. In that sense, I do take opening theory seriously.
Then there is Opening Theory. This is the current accepted wisdom of what is the best and most topical move in a given position. It’s the kind of theory that goes out to move 20 or 25 or 30. It comes and goes with the seasons, just like fashion, and it is mostly driven by people slavishly following what the Great Players of the day, Carlsen and Anand and Topalov and so on, play. This is the Opening Theory that I feel is a waste of time for players below 2200 (and probably for players below 2400, although I cannot speak with the same authority on this point as Jesse can).
I also believe that this is the Opening Theory that Jesse was talking about. Once you get to 2400 level and you are playing grandmasters all the time — in other words, you are playing professional chess — then you need to start paying attention to that kind of Opening Theory. But below 2200 level, when you are not playing grandmasters, only amateurs who imitate grandmaster ideas, there is absolutely no point to it. You are better off playing solid moves that make sense to you.
So with this clarification, I would say that “Opening Theory is a scam.” For amateurs. On the other hand, working hard and developing your own opening lines and your own understanding of the principles underlying them — that is never a scam.
There’s one other thing I should say, to clear my own conscience. When I wrote, “opening theory is a scam” (now amended to “Opening Theory is a scam”), I was of course stating my thesis in very strong terms. I did that because if you don’t shock people, you aren’t going to change their behavior or at least get them to think about it.
But it’s important to acknowledge one sense in which Opening Theory is not a scam. The term “scam” generally implies a conscious behavior, a conscious trick to give people something different from what they think they are getting. I don’t believe that the vast majority of GM’s who write opening books are consciously scamming their buyers. However, the result is the same: the amateurs buy something that they think will solve all of their problems (the “get-rich-quick” mentality that Dennis writes about), and then they are either puzzled or angry when their opponents play lines that Grandmaster Z doesn’t approve of and win anyway.
About halfway through his post, Dennis writes:
So it’s hard to take his first point seriously as stated. What I think he really means is this: opening theory is important, but you should create your theory and not waste your time and money on opening books written by GMs (allegedly for 2400s). That’s a very different thesis, and now we should ask if it’s true or at least plausible.
He’s correct, this is very much closer to what I had in mind. And the rest of his post, from here on, is very informative. Now he refers to his own experience. He writes about how he was able to improve rapidly past the expert stage when he started reading and absorbing a lot of mainstream theory and grandmaster games. Other players, he says, scoffed at him as a “book” player, but he argues that this is what helped him improve and leave those players behind. He also cites the example of Bobby Fischer, who was a notorious theory hound and voracious reader.
I can’t really criticize this, because it’s written from the heart and from personal experience. Dennis truly means to defend Opening Theory, sanctified and canonized by grandmaster practice. He does not want you to play second-best moves, offbeat lines, etc. Most importantly, he argues that you should not spurn the opportunity to learn from stronger players who have written thoughtful books. Although he doesn’t cite it, Isaac Newton’s quote would be apropos here: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
To this I can only say that each of us learns from experience, and our experiences are different. That is why I called my post “Dana’s Opening Philosophy.” It’s not “the only true opening philosophy,” but a philosophy that works for me. Similarly, we have now seen “Dennis’s Opening Philosophy” (at least a part of it) which says that you should find good opening books, ones where the GM’s really take the time to explain their ideas, and you should work on understanding rather than memorization.
Dana’s Opening Philosophy, instead, emphasizes creative thinking above all. Intriguingly, I think that computers have made this approach more accessible to amateurs than ever before, because computers are good at pointing out holes in the conventional wisdom. They give you license to ask the “What if …?” questions. But be warned: the computer is a very fickle ally, and it is imperative to think for yourself when you are doing computer-assisted analysis. Otherwise it’s even worse than following book analysis. (Why? Because “computer moves” are intelligible only to computers. The computer move that Rybka shows as best may require you to find another computer move the next move, and another one the move after that, and so on. At least if you are following human analysis, the thought behind it can usually be expressed in human-understandable terms.)
Both philosophies, Dennis and mine, are consistent with the idea of working hard rather than hoping to find a shortcut. Now, the real question is: What is your opening philosophy?
