The idea is to walk in five iconic national parks in the American Southwest, starting with Yosemite.
Because I am on holiday, I have only taken along one chess book, Mikhail Botvinnik's One Hundred Selected Games, for some light reading.
Coincidentally, in the foreword, Botvinnik touches on a subject I covered in my last Torquay post, namely whether to go for a deep but narrow repertoire or one that is wide but shallow.
Botvinnik writes: "A player should not, and indeed cannot attempt to play all the openings known to theory.
"For one competition three or four opening systems for White and the same for Black are quite sufficient. But these systems must be prepared thoroughly.
"If you do not have such systems at your command you can hardly count on finishing very high in the table."
He adds: "But it is also very unsatisfactory for a master to play only one opening; his opponents will be well prepared for play against him, and above all his chess horizon will be too narrow, [and] in many positions he will simply play by rote."
Whether Botvinnik's words support a deep but narrow repertoire, or tend to favour a wide but shallow one, may be a matter of opinion, but it is worth bearing in mind he was writing in the late 1940s, long before the age of databases.
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| View from my hotel window of a cable car going by on one of San Francisco's three remaining cable-car lines |
Enioy your trip,do not think about chess!
ReplyDeleteI hope for the former; the latter is not going to happen.
DeleteBotvinnik had lines in the Winawer French and Slav which look totally chaotic when you meet them for the first time, but where he had deep knowledge of the resulting complexity. I suppose that's deep but narrow.
ReplyDeleteAlso his line of the English is a structure which can be played against most tries by the opponent. That's where from left (a1) you play c4, Nc3, d3, e4, Nge2, g3, Bg2 and 0-0. For the next few moves there are possibilities of Rb1, a3, b4 on the queenside. Also Be3, Qd2 and f4 with ideas directly at the opposing King.
The same stuff can be played with colours reversed when allowed.
Regarding databases, were there not stories of card indexes in the Central Chess Club in Moscow where collective opening knowledge was pooled?
RdC
Yes, I feel I've read somewhere (Kotov?) about such card indexes. Indeed, I seem to recall at least one GM describing how he compiled his own card index.
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