New answers tagged theory
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d5 is a very good Benoni for white (if there is such thing as a not-very-good Benoni for white) exactly as Arne mentioned, because white can maneuver his knight to c4. Usually arises from a different move order though, 1. d4 c5 2. d5 e6 3. e4, and this is the reason why 1. ... c5 is not great against 1. d4. You'd want to wait for that pawn to arrive on c4.
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It is certainly playable. The main drawback is that you give White the choice between two very different mainline openings:
3.Nf3 transposes to a Sicilian, where Black is already committed to e6 (Kan, Taimanov or Scheveningen, but no Najdorf, Sveshnikov, etc.).
3.d5 reaches a Benoni structure and may transpose to a mainline Benoni if White later plays c4. ...
1
The other answers are focusing on openings but that's not at all the reason why you're stuck at your level. You've pretty much asked your own question: you keep making blunders. No matter how deep your strategical knowledge is, you won't get anything from it if you hang a piece, no matter how badly you'd been dominating your opponent before.
I'd suggest you ...
7
This table can be thought of as a tabular representation of an opening tree of in-theory moves where the rows (y-axis) represent the flow of the game and the columns (x-axis) refer to variations/branches in the tree that can occur.
The author in your quote indicated that 2...exf4 spans a family 24 variations/sub-variations that are noteworthy (and considered ...
2
Given that you are even asking this question, I am going to be a bit presumptuous and guess you are, like me, not a highly rated (elo > 2000) player.
For chess books that are not about opening theory, I would not worry too much about the age of the book. Sure, the occasional study or evaluation has been adjusted based on computer engines, but these are ...
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I write this as an answer (even if it doesn't contribute that much, but it would get too long).
If you ask any expert of the selfmate genre in problem chess, he will give you an immediate enthusiastic yes: Selfmate strategy is much more complex than n#. Here is an especially glaring example: Motive inversion. In "normal" chess, you will never make ...
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