Attacking Chess Game of the Week - 07-23-2010

Attacking Chess Opening Overview - Reti Gambit

Overview
This gambit against the French is not very well know and has not had a large amount of popularity.  It is slowly gaining players who like and - and there are some GMs are also playing it.  It is a fun chess opening that is played against the French defense.  The most recent book on it was written by Thomas Johansson and is called The Fascinating Reti Gambit.

History
The gambit was first played by Reti just before he switched from 1.e4 to playing 1.Nf3.  Sad to say that he did not continue playing the variation and it was fairly obscure for a long time.  In the 90s a number of GMs starting playing the variation.  Most players of the French Defense look down on it and most books only give a line on it and say Black as equality or an advantage.

Moves
The gambit starts out like this.  1.e4 e6 2. b3

This takes Black out of his standard French play and White ends up playing a gambit.  The main line plays as follows:

2... d5 3. Bb2 dxe4 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Qe2 Bb4 6.O-O-O Qe7 7.Kb1 Ndb7 8.g4 O-O 9. g5 Nd5 10. Nxe4

Common Tactics

1. Opposite side castling - this often leads to crazy attacks where White and Black try to mate each other first.
2. g4-g5 - This attack often forces the Black knight to a less than ideal location.
3. Bg2 will give White more influence in the center and often wins back the sacrificed pawn.

Summary
The main purpose behind the gambit is to throw Black into a tactical game instead of the many quiet games that they can have playing the French defense. The game is much more open than the standard French defense, and with opposite side castling it is sure to have both sides attacking. The Reti Gambit is very interesting and the games are full of interesting tactical ideas.

Attacking Chess Game of the Week - 2010-07-09

Attacking Chess Opening Overview - Smith-Morra Gambit

Overview
The Smith-Morra gambit always evokes a very strong response from many players. It is the ideal idea - limit the large amount of theory that one must know and learn a system that allows White to have an initiative while putting the Sicilian player on the defensive. It has a less than ideal reputation but it is a good alternative for players to learn tactics, open lines and have less opening study to do.

History
The gambit is relatively new, but the idea has been around for a while. Morphy was the first player to do the c3 gambit, but it was not in the modern move order. Tartakower was the first grandmaster who actually tried to play the modern move order. He played the gambit on and off through his career. In South America there was some analysis done by Rivadavia. The major contribution to the popularization of the gambit was done by Pierre Morra and Ken Smith. They provided a good amount of analysis and played it enough to get attention.

Moves
1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3. c3

This is the starting position of the Smith-Morra gambit.  It can be declined at this point, although accepting it with the intent to show it is weak seems like the rage right now.

3...dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Nf3 d6 6. Bc4 e6 7. O-O Nf6 8. Qe2 Be7 9. Rd1

This is the classical main line position.  White is threatening 10. e5, is castled, has an active position and development is ahead of Black.


In general, White develops with the following scheme Nf3, Bc4, O-O, Qe2, Rd1 followed by deciding on the best place for the queen bishop.  Sometimes Black plays to take advantage of this setup and it must be changed but normally Whites setup is fine.


Common Tactics
There are some common tactics that exist in the Smith-Morra. I list them below.

1. e5 thrust
2. Knight sacrifice on d5
3. Piece Sacrifice on b5

Summary
The Smith-Morra gambit is a fun, exciting gambit that takes Black out of his comfort zone in the Sicilian.  The game usually ends up with White having the initiative in a fairly even game.  Black is denied from playing his pet Sicilian system and has to be more defensive.  There are a number of ways for Black to equalize, but the games are fun and complex.

Attacking Chess Opening Overview - Dutch Defense

An opening that always intrigued me has been the Dutch Defense.  It creates an imbalanced attacking game where black is fighting to win instead of working to neutralize Whites first move advantage. Currently I play the King's Indian and looking at some of the Leningrad variation they seem similar.  The main line for the Leningrad can be found below:



At this point the game is very imbalanced and both sides will need to watch for various tactics. It seems like the kind of opening I would love to play. I have had issues with so many people playing Anti King's Indian variations that I sometimes consider learning this and playing it.

Chessgames.com has a section dedicated to the Leningrad Dutch

Studying Chess Openings

This is something every amateur (That's me!) at some time in their life spends too much time studying.  In my study plan (Chess Study Plan) I have planned to spend around 30 mins a week studying chess openings.  But what will I be studying and how will I remember it?

1. The first thing to remember is that as someone still learning chess, studying openings a lot is not productive.  One needs to spend more time studying tactics, endgame and masters games.
2. What seems to be the most difficult for a player to do is to choose which openings to play.  That can be an entirely different discussion.  I am assuming that you already know which openings you want to play.
3. Download Chess Position Trainer (See my Chess Links page for the link) and install it.  If you use a Mac or Linux, I would suggest installing Virtualbox (or another VM system) and a copy of Windows in the VM just for studying with this tool.  Here is a screenshot from their website. 
   
   
   
4. How I use Chess Position Trainer(CPT) for openings is I create a subrepertoire for each of the openings I want to study. As I read through a book I will input the lines I want to use and learn.  There is a spot to take notes on the current board and indicate the plans, tactics etc.  This is ideal for keeping track of things you find while studying.
5. Each time I play a game, I use CPT's Find Novelty option, which will find where the game deviated from where I studied.  I can see if I had studied a different line or if it is new.  I look up in books the novelty and see if someone has covered it.  I then make a decision on what I want to play and add it to my CPT repertoire.
6. Something to remember, you may not understand the ideas behind the moves the opponent is making.  There are books that can be purchased for this, or you can spend some time thinking about why you think they did it.  Reviewing your game with a friend or mentor is a great way to learn the plans.  I use the Basic Chess Openings and More Basic Chess Openings books to get the general idea of openings.
7. You should study games played by masters that match your repertoire.  These can be from a book, website or database that you have on your computer.
8. After finishing reading a book, CPT has a great study tool in which is quizzes you on the lines you added to it.  This is high recommended to improve line retention, but don't forget the ideas behind the moves are more important.  The study tool includes a way of tracking your progress in learning your opening.  It provides the percentage of positions that you have learned.
9. To continue to learn and be comfortable in your opening of choice you must play a lot of games with that opening.  A great way to do this is playing speed chess - online or at a club.  Online you have an advantage in that you can save all the games and review them later.  Once you get comfortable with the opening, playing it in slower games is great.  (Check out my Chess Links page for places to play - I will be adding and reviewing more places as time goes on).

I am sure there is something that I am missing on studying an opening. What do you do to learn your opening repertoire? Are there features I missed in CPT? How do you figure out what the ideas are in various openings? Are there websites that have overviews of chess openings?

I will be starting my Chess Study plan this weekend and plan on having a weekly update on how I am progressing.

Creating a Chess Study Plan

In order to improve my chess I need to spend time each week studying the various aspects of chess. It is difficult for me to spend more than an hour a day in my improvement process so I will allocate 7 hours a week for chess improvement. My chess plan can be found in the table at the end of the post.

It is possible I may have more time on some weeks and less time on others. By improving across a large number of areas, I will shore up my weaknesses and improve my strengths. A lot of Amateurs spend a lot of time studying openings which stunts their growth. Learning a little bit about openings is important but spending a lot of time on them is not constructive. The most important areas to spend time on is Tactics, Studying Master Games and Studying your own games after playing them. What good does learning every opening in MCO if you never use it or are lost once you get there.

If you have your own chess study plan please post in the comments so we can compare. I would love to figure out how to improve mine.

I will follow up with posts on how I am studying the various areas, what tools and materials I am using and how to measure progress if possible.

7 hours a week

Time to Spend	Activity	Why is this activity important
1/2 hour	Opening Study	Slowly growing my opening Repertoire
1 1/2 hours	Tactics	Improving chess tactics will be biggest factor for improvement
1/2 hour	Middle Game Study	Learn how to get to positions where tactics will help win games
1/2 hour	Endgame Study	Win won games, draw seemingly lost ones
1 hour	Master Game Study	Studying masters games will help me in all areas of chess. I will see the kind of openings they play, tactics they use and plans they develop.
2 hours	Play Games	If I don't practice what I learn I will forget it.
1 hour	Review Games	Learning from ones own mistakes is a requirement to improving in chess.