On Nov 17, 12:12 am, samsloan wrote:

I will have you know that I won all three of my games with black at
the World Open that started with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6 !

That's impressive!

But it still seems unwise to pay, what? $200-400 to enter
a tournament, plus hotel expenses and whatnot, then try
and lose (even if you failed!) by playing bad moves right in
the opening.

Most guys wait until after they are out of the books to do
that! I just came from chessgames.com, where I was
looking over some games of a player who tied for our state
championship this year. I noticed that the opening went
"normally" for both 2300+ players, but when the books
were done something strange happened: really bad moves!
Serious errors were traded back and forth, until finally, a
draw was agreed (though there was plenty of play left for
the lower-rated of the two).

I must admit that most players don't have any refutations
memorized for lines considered horrible, because they
don't often have to face those lines, but still: why play
weak moves, if you don't have to? Does it gain you the
attention you desperately need or something?

Personally, I find that good moves are more effective than
bad ones; for some reason, my bad moves just don't seem
to help me win very many games. Example: I was playing
over one game where the 2300+ (no, not Taylor Kingston)
had the choice between the positionally-correct recapture
....bxc5 or the cheap shot ...Bxc5 which happened to
contain a bit of poison (if White replies B-g5??, Black has
an obvious sac': ...Bxf2+, followed by the routine ...Ne4+
and then ...Nxg5). I would have seen -- but rejected -- the
cheapo, and played the correct recapture with the pawn,
but this guy sees the trappy cheap shot and off he goes,
running into serious trouble later on. That whole game
had him on the defensive, because he went for a cheap
trap. He only drew, although he had many chances to
win because his opponent had no clue either.


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