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How to build a chess opening repertoire

I ran across the following. You might enjoy. 1. Part I: Getting The Lay Of The Land 2. Part II: Your Style 3. Part III: How To Live With

4 comments:

  1. Thanks. Some very nice points there. On the same note, I have always tried to answer this question "What is my playing style?" and I have never come with an answer. How does one exactly know what their playing style is?

    For example, I lose tactical games against higher rated players and win the similar games against lower rated players. So I am not sure if I am tactical player. Same applies to positional games.

    I have read it many places and one should play the game to their style. But really, how do you know your own style? Any thoughts on this...

    Thanks

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  2. Marijan,

    I believe I saw the same article
    elsewhere and mentioned it to
    you both at Wegman's. The one part
    that's missing from this that was
    in the version I saw was that the
    author characterized the World
    Champions in terms of what style
    of player they were. I shall see
    if I can find the link and I'll
    post it.

    --Vic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. So, it turns out that he didn't have
    the characterization of World Champs
    in the article but rather as a reply
    to some questions. Here's a copy
    of the author's characterizations of
    player styles :

    ---------Included List-------------

    The World Champions:

    Steinitz: defensive and positional play
    Lasker: psychological and tactical play
    Capablanca: Intuitive, technical and positional play
    Aljechin: Imaginative, tactical and calculative play
    Euwe: theoretical, tactical and concrete play
    Botwinnik: theoretical, strategic and concrete play
    Smyslov: attacking and intuitive play
    Tal: Imaginative, tactical and speculative play
    Petrosjan: defensive, positional, prophylactic and intuitive play
    Spassky: attacking and intuitive play
    Fischer: theoretical, technical, clear and concrete play
    Karpov: Intuitive, technical and positional play
    Kasparov: imaginative, tactical and calculative play
    Kramnik: defensive, positional and intuitive play
    Anand: all round play with a preference for tactical and complicated play

    ------------End of List-----------

    --Vic.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tough one, Harish. I think you are positional defensive player. Sometimes you are very cautious to attack, and yet another time you throw everything at your opponent, and at hose moment you forget about caution.
    I consider myself attacking tactical player, but how can 1.d4 and 1…c6 fit in it. It seems that I should open with 1.e4 and play Sicilian as black, yet I prefer closed game.
    I look unconsciously for the tactics from the beginning and neglect development of the pieces, and that is the reason I am worse from the opening, to the point that I am accused of cheating on line, because being worse in the beginning I often win tactically. If I am thinking about center, diagonals, lines, pawn structure, space, not grabbing the pawn etc., I can have a dissent game from the beginning. It would be good to have somebody to remind me of these things before I move. (Can I write that on the palm of my hand?)

    ReplyDelete