A Real Chess Post

When I was about 13 or so I used to play chess daily with a school friend. We both played on the chess team and we were very competitive with each other. We both wanted to be "first board" at the annual state championship. I can admit today that he was a stronger player than I was, (still is today too) but at the time I refused to admit it. What I do remember is he was certainly a better tactical player than I was. At the time I didn't recognize it that way. I remember thinking he was better at the "king pawn" openings. He liked to play the "Sicilian" and the "Ruy Lopez" and he would probably beat me 90% of the time in those openings.

Refusing to believe he was better than me, I adapted by learning to play "closed" openings. I would counter his 1. e4 with the French Defense, and I played 1. d4 to avoid the sharp and tactical Sicilian play. Perhaps he still won 90% of the games, but the games took longer and I felt like I won more often although I don't have any real record of what our score was. We literally played 1000 games from 7th grade till I graduated a year before he did.

I think the fact that he beat me so handily so many times has kind of handicapped me in a way. Because I never really practiced playing "open" tactical games since then. I've played games that I refer to as races. With pawn structures like.



or



The goal in games with pawn structures like this.. closed centers.. is almost always to mobilize your forces to one side of board, break through and conquer before your opponent does the same on the other side of the board. There's really nothing wrong with this and it can be exciting chess at times. However its often very strategic and not very tactical. Its about maintaining tempo and attacking the "right" square to make your break through before your opponent does.

When I started blogging and reading the "Knights Errant" blogs, and came into first contact with the MDLM credo I realized that I would need to play more "open" games in order to improve at chess. Its a tough process for me because opening play does make a difference at 1600 level. Not a huge difference, but you can lose in the openings. So learning all new lines of play has been as tough as studying tactics. Anyway I have been experimenting with the Benko as one opening that seems slightly more "open" without being completely outside my comfort realm. A typical Benko pawn structure looks like this



Which still has a closed center but open play for both players on the queen side of the board. I hope to post a couple annotated games in which I played the Benko soon.

I still can't make that leap to playing 1. e4 though. I've tried it here and there in blitz and OTB but it feels too awkward for me. Like trying write with the wrong hand. Anyone else struggling to incorporate strong tactics into closed game play? I read all your comments so let me know.