Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: CK Old Trap

You have probably read chess books about openings. Usually they provide many variations. Remembering long sequences of moves is difficult. Because of that, comments explaining the meaning of those moves are necessary.

Good chess books are those which give variations together with explanations of the reason for those moves.

From children, we learn by knowing (seeing, reading, listening) the reason of what happens. A long sequence of chess moves is strange to our common language. Memorizing them is useless because most probably after 2 or 3 weeks we forget some or all the moves, or even we can’t remember the right order of the sequence. The risk of the latter is that during a game, our position can collapse at any moment.

Every opening has a tree of variations and very often, the reason (main ideas, plans) of each branch is different.

For example, two popular lines of the Caro-Kann Defense are:

There is always a chance that a player knowing many lines with similar positions, mix them. That is highly probable in games with rapid time controls.

That is what happened in today’s game, where the player with Black mixed moves from the previous two CK-lines and fell into a nasty trap.

Dear readers, instead of memorizing moves when studying openings, is better to understand why those moves are played. Knowing ‘why’ is the best and human way of learning.

Maybe you play chess but are unable to attend a local club. If that is your case, then join our virtual Chess.com club. On our site, we regularly play online tournaments and team matches. More than 1190 members enjoy that chance and new players join every week. We have new tournaments scheduled for the coming months waiting for players! Join now!