Nigel Davies How To Study.Pdf

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ChessCafe is pleased to introduce its newest columnist, British

grandmaster Nigel Davies. His career highlights have seen many

outstanding results, among them firsts at Linares International

1987, Owens Corning Wrexham International 1993,

Gausdal International 1997, as well as being named

the Player of the Year in the 2001 4NCL Division

II.

Let's Take A

Look...

He has authored or co-authored

Master Chess (Pergamon Press

1985) with Chandler, Kopec,

Morrison & Mullen; Bobby

Fischer: The $5,000,000 Comeback

(Cadogan 1992) with Pein &

Levitt; The Chess Player's Battle

Manual (Batsford, 1998); The

Power Chess Program: Book 1

(Batsford, 1998); The Power Chess

Program: Book 2 (Batsford, 1999);

Kasparov v Kramnik, London 2000 (Batsford,

2000) with Andrew Martin; Alekhine's Defence

(Everyman, 2002); The Grünfeld Defence

(Everyman, 2002); and Taming the Sicilian

(Everyman, 2002). He lives with his wife Louise

and son Sam in Southport, England.

Nigel Davies

In his ChessCafe column, Nigel will be annotating

games of the average club player, looking at the

good, the bad and yes, the ugly, with an eye to help

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everyone benefit and improve.

We invite you to submit games to be considered by

Nigel in this column. For all games submitted,

please provide the following information: (1)

Names of both players; (2) Ratings of both players;

(3) When and where the game was played; (4) The

time control used in the game; and (5) Any other

information you think would be helpful for us to

know. Please submit the games (in PGN or CBV

format if possible) to: nigeldavies@chesscafe.com .

Who knows, perhaps you will see the game in an

upcoming column, as Nigel says to you, "Let's take

a look..."

How to Study the Opening

How should someone study the opening? The impression one

might gain from many opening books is that they should be

learned by rote; the books concerned compile huge trees of

variations without saying a single word. If these variations were

not important, surely the author would not see fit to mention them?

And as there is not a word of explanation as to what each side is

trying to do, might one not assume that this is of minor or zero

importance? Is that not a logical conclusion from the way these

books are ‘written’?

Well not necessarily. It could be that compiling moves is just an

easier option than actually explaining them. The drawback for the

reader is that it’s very easy to find yourself following the wrong

path; as a 13-year-old living in the heyday of such ‘literature’, I

remember trying to ‘learn’ the Sicilian Dragon by memorizing

variations from a particular book. Needless to say I did not come to

understand it very well and in one of my old Dragon games I see

that I blocked my ‘Dragon bishop’ with a wholly inappropriate

…e7-e5. With even a modicum of understanding I would never

have done such a thing.

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After several similar experiences it was back to the drawing board;

I came to the conclusion that relying on memory was ineffective at

best. Even when I managed to learn the variations, I’d tend to

forget them in a very short time. But the greatest problem was in

knowing what to do when I reached the end of my variation, or if

my opponents played some supposedly dubious alternative.

Because I did not understand much about the actual positions, I

was not well equipped to improvise if things changed slightly from

my rote learned lines.

Over the years, and after much trial and error, I gradually became

convinced that the key to playing the opening well was to

understand the middle game. I discovered that when you know

where your pieces belong it becomes much easier to develop them

on the right squares in the first place. You also know which pawn

structures to aim for and which to avoid.

When one sees things in this light it follows that one of the best

ways to study the openings is to examine complete games, for then

you can see each side’s strategy unfold from the very first moves.

Playing over a lot of games very quickly can give you a good feel

for the general game plan. I also think it’s useful to study well

annotated games in particular variations, for then one gets to grips

with the actual problems and issues that arise when the aims of the

two players come into conflict.

One of my own practices, which I heartily recommend, is to tinker

around with typical positions, trying different moves and ideas

until you are satisfied you understand how the thing works. When I

do this I find that the position becomes ‘part of me’ and I play it

much better. It’s a process by which you get to ‘own’ the ideas

rather than just know about them.

To show the value of this kind of knowledge, let’s take a look at

the following game played by two players with very different

strengths and weaknesses. It was evident from the start that White

knew what he should be doing and had almost certainly spent some

time on the niceties of these positions. Black, on the other hand,

had to work it all out for himself, and whilst he managed to find

some of the thematic ideas over the board, such as playing …f7-f5,

he did not find the key idea of bringing his knight to e6. Without

this his position soon started to creak.

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J Turnock (2016) – Gary Murphy (1960)

Sicilian Defence

England 2003

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5

The so-called Rossolimo Variation, which lends the game a

completely different character to the open lines with 3 d4. I know a

number of Accelerated Dragon devotees who prefer to avoid it

with 2...g6, not worrying about White’s alternatives to transposing

into a regular Accelerated Dragon such as 3 c3 or 3 d5 cxd4 4

Qxd4.

3...g6 4 O-O

The old move. Recently White has been playing 4

Bxc6 as after 4...dxc6 5 d3 he keeps the option of

castling queenside. A nice example of this plan was

Ivanchuk - Anand, London 1994, which went

5...Bg7 6 h3 e5 7 Be3 b6 8 Nc3 f6 9 Qd2 Be6 10 O-

O-O Ne7 11 Bh6 O-O 12 g4 Nc8 13 Bxg7 Kxg7 14

Nh4 Nd6 15 Ng2! (preparing to open up the king

side with f2-f4) 15...Nb5 16 f4 Nd4 17 Rdf1 b5 18

Kb1 Qa5 19 b3 c4 20 Rf2 and White's attacking

chances were more potent than anything Black

could drum up on the other side of the board.

4...Bg7 5 Re1 Nf6 6 Bxc6 dxc6 7 h3 O-O 8 d3

Qc7?!

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In this kind of position

you really need to know

what plan you should

adopt as it's not easy to

figure it out over the

board. Although this

looks like a natural

move Black really needs

to keep that c7 square

free so he can route his

knight from f6 to e6 via e8 and c7. Over the next

few moves things go badly wrong for Black as he

struggles to make sense of his position.

To find examples of how to play this position, the obvious thing to

do is to conduct a ChessBase search for games after 6...dxc6. But

one can also look at games from the English Opening where you

can get the same type of position with colors reversed.

A great expert in this kind of position is the German Grandmaster

Wolfgang Uhlmann and his games are well worth studying. An

example is the game Uhlmann – Jansa, Amsterdam 1975 which

went as follows: 1 c4 e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 g3 Bb4 5 Bg2 O-

O 6 O-O e4 7 Ne1 Bxc3 8 dxc3 h6 (Preventing Bc1-g5 because

Black’s knight on f6 is an important defender of the e4 pawn and

d5 square. An example of Black omitting 8…h6 is the game

Hardiscay – Lindgren, Budapest 2000, which went 8...d6 9 Bg5

Re8 10 Nc2 h6 11 Bxf6 Qxf6 12 Ne3 Bf5 13 f4 Qe6 and now 14

g4! Bh7 15 Qe1!? followed by 16 Qg3 looks nice for White - he

has taken lots of space on the king side and Black's bishop on h7 is

out of play) 9 Nc2 d6 10 Ne3 Re8 11 Qc2 Re5 12 Bd2 Bd7 13 f4

(White's knight is beautifully placed on e3) 13...exf3 14 exf3 Re8

15 Rae1 Ne7 16 b4 (Gaining space) 16...Qc8 17 Rf2 a5 18 Rfe2

Kf8 19 Bc1 b6 20 a3 Rb8 21 Qd3 Bc6 22 Nd5!? Nexd5 (After

22...Bxd5 23 cxd5 Nfxd5 24 c4 as White's bishops look very

powerful) 23 Rxe8+ Bxe8 24 cxd5 Bd7 25 Qd4 Ng8 26 bxa5 bxa5

27 c4 Qb7 28 Bd2 a4 29 c5 Re8 (After 29...Qa7 White would play

30 Bb4 with strong pressure against d6) 30 c6 (Winning a pawn)

30...Rxe1+ 31 Bxe1 Qb1 32 cxd7 Qxe1+ 33 Bf1 Qe7 34 Qxa4 Qd8

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