19
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How to play against higher rated (much stronger) players
Unless you have gotten much stronger than your 1542 FIDE rating, you have to realize that your odds of winning are not very good. It is fine to be realistic, but just do not let that overwhelm your ...
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How to play against higher rated (much stronger) players
Objectively speaking there is nothing special you can do.
Just do the regular preparation:
refresh your opening repertoires or specifically the opening you expect to have on the board
analyze your ...
- 20.7k
13
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How does opening preparation work at GM level?
Professional chess is hard.
Yes. Professional elite players prepare as many opening lines as they can. They have seconds who are dedicated to opening preparation (generally on a computer). The most ...
- 22.4k
12
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How does opening preparation work at GM level?
Not a GM myself, but my understanding is that there is more than one way.
First of all any decent GM would have notes (nowadays on computer) with all the opening lines they play. These notes might ...
- 20.7k
12
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How to play against higher rated (much stronger) players
In his book "Chess for Tigers", Simon Webb says that the best thing to do is to drag the elephant into the swamp. In other words, aim for complications, where the stronger player has a chance to make ...
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Can I ask to see other players' score sheets between tournament rounds?
Can I request (i.e. request from a TD) to see the submitted score sheets of my opponent from his past rounds during the tournament, for example to refresh my memory of the openings he's likely to play?...
- 94.5k
10
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Seconds of Magnus Carlsen
So far, following seconds have been revealed (NRK, ChessBase):
GM Peter Heine Nielsen (no surprise as he was part of team Carlsen in WCC 2014)
GM Laurent Fressinet (also no surprise as he was part ...
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(For training purposes) Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than others (and if so, what are they)?
Learning good chess principles and playing against clearly dubious openings like 1. a4 or 1. h4 are not mutually exclusive. In fact, following solid opening principles is the best way to counter weak ...
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(For training purposes) Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than others (and if so, what are they)?
Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than
others?
There are few recognized openings which start with a rook pawn move on move one, except in circumstances where the ...
- 94.5k
7
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Is it beneficial to play themed practice games?
It really depends on what your end goal is. Themed games in a specific opening are good to get familiar with a specific opening, and get a "feel" for the positions arising in the resulting middlegames....
- 7,978
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(For training purposes) Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than others (and if so, what are they)?
I'm seeing a lot of great answers being met with, "This doesn't answer my question" - so I'm going to go ahead and answer your literal question (even though the answer won't help you out at all.)
a4 ...
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Preparing for an OTB tournament: I must do well!
First, from a pure chess standpoint, you are probably as close to prepared as you will be since there is only so much you can learn between now and Friday.
The most important things will be to get a ...
- 32.4k
7
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How does one analyse openings judged dubious by engines?
Forget the engines. We are humans (hopefully) and are only interested in how human's play.
The King's Indian Defence (KID), a favorite opening of Tal, Fischer and Kasparov (and now played by Nakamura),...
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Can deep preparation for the early novelty be useful?
"Is it possible for White to gain an advantage due to excellent preparation, or are all uncommon early novelties bad enough to be easy for Black to refute?" Both are possible.
A famous ...
- 5,713
6
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Is it beneficial to play themed practice games?
A great practice routine if you have a willing partner is to take a position from an opening you wish to study and play a series of blitz games from both sides. For example, when I was younger me and ...
- 1,976
6
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How do GMs and IMs prepare for tournaments?
This question is too broad, everyone is training differently. There is also much more motivation on the side of strong young IMs than on side of weak GMs. A lot of colleagues just play, rarely train ...
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6
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(For training purposes) Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than others (and if so, what are they)?
Your kid did not lose the game because he did not know how to respond to that opening. He lost the game because he played worse! (by the way you're telling the story, probably because of a tactical ...
- 16.3k
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How long does it take to use opening preparation at top level?
As Brian noted, theory can move on quickly, but that does not remotely mean that everything that was prepared is lost in a short period of time. I think that the biggest issue was just that prepping ...
- 32.4k
6
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How do you document your opening repertoire on a mac?
A lichess study would be a good way to do this.
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Benoni Theory Help
The whole point of hypermodern openings like the Benoni is to encourage a big center. If you don't get that you'd probably be better off playing something else.
The Dutch leads to unbalanced positions,...
- 4,249
5
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Are computers destroying chess?
A new answer like this to a four-year-old question is probably doomed to lie, unread, at the bottom of the answer column, yet four years late I have something different to add, so here goes.
That ...
- 4,539
5
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Can watching grandmasters' games improve my chess 'thinking'?
To get the most from other people's games, it makes sense to look at games that were played well. However, what a beginner needs to see is not perfection, but what happens if one player makes a ...
- 3,347
5
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Can watching grandmasters' games improve my chess 'thinking'?
Chess "thinking" is first and foremost a skill. As such it has to be practiced actively. Passively acquired knowledge will only flesh out what you already can do, it will not improve your chess all ...
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Can GMs use computers to beat their opponents?
You pretty much described modern day preparation...
This is exactly what GMs are doing, except that they also try to add some of their own creativity into the process. Nevertheless, the majority of ...
- 19.8k
5
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(For training purposes) Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than others (and if so, what are they)?
How can 1.a4 be bad, when some guy named Magnus played it against a grandmaster and won? :-) See Carlsen-Radjabov (2012), from the World Blitz Championship.
Now, I don't think it counts as much ...
- 10.5k
5
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(For training purposes) Are there any openings with rook pawns that are more effective than others (and if so, what are they)?
I made a terribly long book study of well-known and lesser-known unusual openings to contend with my grandpa's massive advantage in opening theory. He could match me in general openings, but I ...
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How long does it take to use opening preparation at top level?
How long does it take until Ju Wenjun is no longer very "booked up"?
Top players have outstanding memories so it takes a very long time for the actual memories of the booking up to fade.
However, ...
- 94.5k
5
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Opening preparation
Learn what is known as the basic opening principles, and apply them to your game. Since you're a beginner, memorization of long opening lines is a wasted effort at this stage of your chess development,...
- 7,978
5
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Empirical question: Is a drawish opening line really a concern for an ambitious player?
You're right that drawing lines don't really affect people who are lower rated. However, your bar for 2500 isn't practical. Most people who are close to master rated (say 2100+, and even some lower ...
- 5,713
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Can deep preparation for the early novelty be useful?
The point of preparation is to set problems for your opponent that they will find hard to solve over the board. 1.h3 does not do this. It poses no immediate difficulty, and there are millions of ways ...
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