Timeline for Depth vs breadth of opening knowledge
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
4 events
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| Jun 20, 2021 at 6:29 | comment | added | Papangue | Thank you for your answer. I get your point and will also keep it in mind. My understanding is that it should be a balance between understanding and learning and that this is also dependent on the level of each player. As a beginner I find that learning some opening moves makes me more confident. I also agree with @blues on the fact that traps/tricky gambits learned by your opponent are, at my level, much better designed than the actual level of both players, which may make it hard to properly react to it as a lower level player if you just rely your own understanding | |
| Jun 19, 2021 at 14:46 | comment | added | Philip Roe | @blues I would agree with you in certain cases. It would be impossible to understand the most common openings without memorizing a few moves. That is how understanding works. But the question was about depth; should you memorize a lot of moves? Should that be what you understand by learning? My answer stands; you dont have to. | |
| Jun 19, 2021 at 11:11 | comment | added | blues | I don't feel like this answer accurately describes what memorization can do for you in chess. Basically when learning opening, we are borrowing the understanding of all the grandmasters before us that have analyzed the line. Even at mediocre levels you are not going to survive without memorizing at least a few moves of the most common openings, and it really doesn't matter how much understanding there is. The point is just to prevent running into some tactical trap devised by the best of the best that your opponent has memorized. | |
| Jun 18, 2021 at 23:38 | history | answered | Philip Roe | CC BY-SA 4.0 |