@starwork said in #12:
> Learning lots of openings = less time to dive deep into the opening & learn ideas
> Learning opening specifically for 1 game = too little time spent, opponent probably has better info than you on the opening, opponent only needs to go for 1 of the lines in that opening, you have to look at all the lines
Obviously I'm not talking about learning how to play the Sicilian, Caro Kann, French, King's Pawn, Pirc all at once including concrete variations against all of White's attempts. That would take a lot of time. I'm talking about looking at a subset of the most topical tabiyas for on opening (e.g Quickstarter Guides comprised of 20 lines).
The LTR Caro-Kann by GM Erwin L'Ami is a highly esteemed reference work, dealing with almost everything White can try. The whole repertoire consists of 822 trainable variations (while it also has a pretty larger Quickstarter chapter of 35 variations).
Now, I claim that understanding and working through these 35 variations, one is already ready to face nearly everything (>>80%) that is dangerous and needed to be known (at club level). Other tries are less critical, and many things can be found over-the-board. You'll get the **main ideas** of an opening pretty quickly. Studying a very concrete position 15 moves deep doesn't help your general chess understanding, and these nuances (+-0.2) don't make a lot of difference in online games and even tournament play under 2000 FIDE in case this line really comes on the board.
And let me tell you, I've played against strong opponents OTB and got great, sometimes winning positions even as Black against an FM and some opponents in the 2000 range out of the opening.
There is a point where studying more of the same (opening) bears less fruit than learning something new (opening, or switch to another area of chess, e.g. endgames / tactics). If you have absolutely no holes at all (including sidelines) in your repertoire and are untitled, you are wasting too much time on one opening.
By studying a few other openings in this Pareto-style, you'll gain a lot of knowledge about strategy, plans, pawn structures. It's important that one doesn't learn very sharp and concrete variations of openings that one doesn't play, but focusses on the **ideas** instead.
When you play the Sicilian, it is possible to transpose to lines of the French and even Caro-Kann when White avoids the main lines, that are better for Black. By comparison, you'll understand that e.g. you now play a Caro-Kann where you didn't lose a tempo on c6 and went c5 in one go (and what you should do now). Or that his Alapin line ended you up in a variation of the French defense. The advantage of that is, that it's much more general knowledge and doesn't depend on a certain repertoire and preparation in a certain Chessable course.
You should go deeper than this only in your main opening. And I think rather than studying myriads of weird sidelines, you get much more in terms of chess understanding for your time investment by just learning about a different opening after you've learnt the most important (main) lines of your main opening.
> Against the Open Sicilian, let's say you play the Najdorf. In the Najdorf, there are many lines White can play, and you need to know exactly what to do against each of them. However, your opponent only needs to know how to play one of these lines.
After move 5, your opponent needs to know how to play against the Scheveningen (e6), Najdorf (a6), Dragon (g6), Classical (Nc6) Sicilian, ....
Also, he needs to know how to play all the lines of the Sicilian that do not start with 2. d6, i.e. all lines that start with 2. e6 (e.g. Kan, Taimanov, Four Knights) if he goes for the Open Sicilian, 2. g6 (HAD), 2. Nc6 (e.g. Lasker-Pelikan/Sveshnikov) and maybe even some more rare continuations like 2. Nf6 (Nimzo) etc.
It's symmetrical. Both players have influence on how the game develops.
