Game Spotlight: Opening Blind

While knowing a lot of opening theory isn’t helpful at the club level (you should be spending more time on tactics and endgames), it’s still important to know some.  At least, if the position is not familiar, take your time to think out your moves.  Playing on autopilot is a bad idea.

The example that comes up the most often happens in junior chess.  Since most juniors play the Italian Game, it becomes tempting to think that every game can be opened the same way.  As it happens, that’s not true.  Let’s see what can happen when this scheme runs into some different ideas from Black:

The biggest event of the year at the club, the 2019 Nairobi Chess Club Open Championship, will be on August 23-25.  Events aren’t cheap — we need to pay for the venue, hiring tables, arbiters to ensure the event can be FIDE rated, and so forth.  If you like what we do and feel like helping out, we’re crowdfunding for the first time.  Any help can be sent our way by going here.