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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ต.ค. 2024
- GM Jesse Kraai Talks about why Players Overvalue Openings using the classic
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann, get your copy here: amzn.to/3SC7Hem
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I think another reason is the "instant gratification" aspect. Openings are very tangible and concrete, they are named and structured. So you spend some time learning about an opening, then you can say "now I know 15 moves of this line in the Nimzo", for example. Or you lose a game online, and then check with the lichess opening database where you went wrong, and then you feel like like you suddenly know how to respond to some sideline which you didn't know before. There is this illusion of feeling like you really "know" more than you did an hour ago. Compared to if you do tactics puzzles for an hour, then afterwards there is no concrete thing to point at and say "today I learned this".
Rytt thanks for writing your idea's
👍👍👍👍
Absolutely correct. Now I understand myself better.
Thank you Jesse for filling a gap in the market and being our “chess psychologist”! I find all your videos highly informative and interesting, especially from a psychological and mental standpoint, but also from a practical one - we just need to do what matters, even though it might not feel as intuitive and instantly gratifying. Many thanks again!
I have to disagree on this one a little bit, I also think the openings are overrated, or overvalued, but I like to study them, for me it's not about being able to knock someone out in the opening, that almost never happens, but if you play a position where you know your plans, than you can get the advantage on the clock, you might spend less energy in in the opening, and later in the game, move 20-30 for example you can find yourself in a situation where you have 70 mins on your clock against your oponnent's 40, so you have more time to calculate and evaluate things, and you are also fresher becouse you knew the position earlier, that is in my opinion the real value of knowing and understanding your openings in the modern era
Players have far more memories of losing traumatically in the opening than of losing bitterly in the endgame.
i mean, someone who hangs their queen in the opening should learn to see their queen is attacked, not learn an opening.
@@Bradley_UA I don't understand why its an "either or" thing. There is this crazy idea that you can do both? Learning opening theory is really good for learning how to plan in chess, establish targets, and how to create/strengthen weaknesses. These aren't unimportant points. Can you do that without studying an opening? Yes, but its way easier to look at what other players are doing to create a plan rather than having to come up with your own idea. No reason to reinvent the wheel in my opinion.
If you have to pick between studying tactics and studying opening theory, obviously studying tactics. But its kind of hard for me to envision a scenario in which someone enjoys chess, but doesn't have time for any opening theory? I mean, you can play like 3 blitz games, 10 minutes of tactics, and 5 minutes of opening theory and that's only an hour of chess.
Its not like we have to only do one thing to the detriment of everything else.
@@insidetrip101 because one thing helps you to not hang your queen, the other does not.
Sure you can still learn openings, but it has no relevance to how likely you are to hang your queen. And if you play perfect 25 moves of theory and hang your queen on 26th, you aren't gonna win more either
However, it's still an either or question, because you have only 24h in a day, and you have to decide how much time you spend playing, studying games or good players and solving tactics, and how much you learn openings. That's why most people will tell you not to bother with openings if you want to pay competitively below ~2000 (cm), and even more so if you are a casual player. Learning some theory is good, of course, especially if you run into the same confusing position, like me in Englund gambit... But otherwise it doesn't improve your chess much.
@@Bradley_UA "because one thing helps you to not hang your queen, the other does not. "
We have a different idea of chess then. If you're hanging pieces without a legitimate attack, then you're either not playing against someone of your skill level or you're so terrible that developing a plan isn't going to help (and by proxy your opponent isn't going to have any idea of what a plan is either).
Its just that if you hang your queen on the 26th move, of course you shouldn't bother learning opening theory, you should focus on learning how pieces actually move (its not even helpful to study tactics at that point). That goes without saying. But once you get an idea about how pieces move, you need to start figuring out how to plan. Opening theory is the best part of chess to learn how to develop plans because that is the whole reason of an opening--to set the board up to maximize your tactical ideas while minimizing your opponents.
@@insidetrip101 yeah, and below 2000 rating is that bad. Look, I merely explained why grandmasters tell people to learn tactics before openings, and why it's pointless to learn both. If you disagree, you have a different idea of chess not just with me but with pretty much any high rated player, and even this video which I guess you haven't watched?
But anyway, general plans are not the same as memorizing openings. If you're just looking at games of famous players and learning general ideas or strategic understanding, then you're not studying openings, and I'd say that's better.
This is a fantastic insight into the psychology of chess or any subject really about the influence of outside or previous experience can change your outlook on any subject. As it applies to chess it is interesting you post this video just recently, for me, I have been studying and coming up specifically with a chess training plan and it has heavy value on tactics and strategy over the opening. I found myself studying openings a lot and found not a single game in my entire life was won or lost due to any opening preparation rather it was usually a tactical sequence or miscalculation. Thanks for such and interesting and profound video. I hope others find its value as it relates to chess and openings.
Why do masters claim opening mastery isn’t necessary until a player reaches quite a high level? In my experience (~1700-1800), I’ve won and lost a ton of games as a direct result of knowing or not knowing an opening. I’d equate opening prep to having a strong tennis serve: it’s shot you have most control over, and it gives you immediate results
In my opinion openings are relevant at all levels BUT they are way less impactful than any other knowledge (midlegames strategy, endgames, tatics)
If you are better than the oppone t in other areas of the game you can prosbly regain the pawn you lost or something
It depends on how you know the openings. Do you know the ideas or are you just memorizing lines?
@@chessconcepts3865 But if you're at a more equivalent skill level, then there's no reason to throw away an advantage. If opening moves don't matter because you can just win it later in the middle game with tactics, then why not just play a4 h4 then bongcloud every game? I'm sure you'll never lose because you didn't take your opening moves to seriously develop your pieces. It just doesn't make sense to me that you'd say any move in chess doesn't matter. They all matter, and acting like every single opening is equivalent is nuts. Sure, kings pawn and the Sicilian there might be very little difference (which there actually is you're probably going to be playing significantly different kinds of games depending on what black chooses), but that's just considering the "good" moves. When you start considering what "bad" moves are, then you can obviously see that this stuff matters. Its also hard to understand opening principals such as developing pieces or controlling the center without at least some opening theory to serve as an example/lesson to illustrate the principals or the dangers of ignoring them.
@@honest_bishop5905 exactly
This is me. I get beat up in the opening, so I study opening theory. Then my opponent makes a move I haven't prepared for on move 3 and I still get beat up.
Tactics puzzles. Openings puzzles on lichess or Opening Improver on AimChess. That with just enough opening prep (4-5 moves of the most common ones I kept facing) got me from lichess 1250 to 1650 rapid in about 1 year.
If this is happening, then you don't understand the purpose of the moves you're making in the opening, and as a result aren't actually studying opening theory and are just memorizing moves.
Memorizing moves is pointless, the idea is to understand the strategical purpose of those moves that will later on yield a tactical advantage (during the middle game), which then leads to a material advantage in the end game.
If you don't know what squares you're trying to control, or what pawns you're trying to attack (or defend as black), then you can't be said to be "studying" opening theory. Playing moves you see other people play is missing the point, its to UNDERSTAND those moves.
To me, opening study is about comfort -- not wanting to feel lost, not knowing what to do. I have often heard that true improvement comes from outside of the "comfort zone" -- so trying to be comfortable is actually not going to help me to improve. Also, opening study improves knowledge but knowledge is not the same as skill.
I have a friend who does not know any opening names, but he plays chess better than me. I am about 1750 USCF strength, He is over 2000. I have much more knowledge, but he has more skill. I'd rather have the skill!
I think it really depends on the opening. There are some openings, particularly some extreme sharp lines of gambits, where knowing lots of opening theory can have a very tangible result in a higher elo. For example, if you play the Smith Morra against the Sicilian, knowing lots of theory can win you a crazy high number of games, and not knowing it will lose you just as many
As an enjoyer of this gambit I couldn't agree more. Knowing theory is essential for playing the Morra or the King's Gambit. Equally you can almost always count on knowing the theory better than your opponent if you've put even a decent amount of effort. C5 and E5 are collectively over 50% of the games you will play as white. King's Gambit and Morra Gambit are less than 1% probability almost irrespective of level of play. No opponent can match you in prep for an opening you play all the time, and they once an year, if that, in serious play.
Also, it's important to note that unlike subtle d4 systems and the like, with these sorts of gambits, there are a lot of moves black just needs to know and its unrealistic that anyone short of 2600 will find them just by thinking as opposed to knowing them.
I think another reason is the prevalence of fast time controls. The only frequent tournaments near me are rapid, and faster games are easier to arrange online.
For years I stuck to the advice of "amateurs don't need to spend much time on the opening". And while I rarely lost to preparation, I many times built up huge time deficits trying to figure out an unfamiliar openings, and subsequently collapsed in time pressure. Prepping the opening immediately improved my results as I could play 5-10 moves instantly and save time for critical positions.
I think this is what is missed, in my humble opinion. I think so slowly (but quite accurately) that to be able to get to the middle game safely, past traps etc... quickly, is helpful.
I suspect for the beginning player knowing an opening is also an instruction in playing properly (i.e centre, develop minor pieces, castle, connect the rooks.) Not doing so starts to feel strange I would think.
I think this advice is also somewhat countered by experiences of various TH-camrs who have cracked 2000 in a short time with the London system (among other practice).
Brilliant video. Perhaps preparation indeed is subconsciously striving to avoid humiliating mistakes rather than, as we consciously fantasize, delivering powerful blows. I'm sure that opening study has usefully avoided our falling into known traps though. We play through games of the greats (as widely recommended) and the annotators point to errors and improvements in the opening and throughout the game: comments on the opening are the first thing we notice. We won't reach the exact ending they reached, but we could reach the exact opening position, so it's more 'relevant'. Opening preparation might really be more about finding out which openings are congenial to you and disruptive to your opponent. I add that there are several very astute and mature comments in this thread!
Some GM who has already mastered endgames and middle games of course has nothing better to do in his prep time than study the openings! The rest of us just need enough opening knowledge to stay out of trouble until the middle game. But how much is that?
I think the reason that people overvalue openings is that when you first start studying openings it really does lead to dramatic improvements and your brain naturally tends to extrapolate. I just think opening study has dramatically diminishing returns and it just takes a while for people to catch up and understand that the original spike in performance they saw was a one-time thing and future improvement comes from studying other areas.
This this this
What do you mean "drastically diminishing returns"? Relative to what? Opening theory exists purely as a mechanism to align your plan to your playstyle. If you're a tactical/agressive player, then you probably enjoy the sicilian, where if you're a more positional/"grindy" player, you're probably going to enjoy playing e5 alot more. This makes sense because you're aligning how you're trying to play with what you're good at. Are there other openings that you could play? Of course, but if you're not naturally going to gravitate toward the "plan" of the opening, then you're probably going to have a harder time with it. So I guess I could see it there, but that's just a matter of understanding the moves you're making and trying to enact the "plan" of the opening--and guess what, that's part of opening theory too. So that can't be the reason.
But in terms of theory lines, if you know more than your opponent, then that helps to solidify some small advantage over an opponent at any time. Does that lead to being up 0.5? where before it used to be +3? Sure, but that's not necessarily diminishing returns, because being ahead 0.5 at the GM level is generally going to mean a bigger advantage than being up +3 at 400 elo. People play better, the more you improve, that's not diminishing returns because it means less, that's diminishing because the players you play against are more capable.
Should you spend the same amount of time on opening theory as you to pattern recognition and tactics? Obviously not, the latter two are way more important. However, acting like its something that just doesn't help past a certain point is dumb.
Try playing bongcloud in serious games, see how that turns out for you. No GM ever plays the bongcloud when they're being serious because EVERY move in chess matters, and I don't understand why the opening would be any exception.
Openings: You get the opening for sure, but you might have no endgame at all. As white you choose(!) your first move, and you have a very high chance to know a good response to blacks first move.
When you study tactics or endgames, you might not get to a position where your knowledge is helpful.
Yes, openings have diminishing returns. For Endgames and tactics it's the other way round: You need to invest a lot to get a considerable amount of return but then you get more and more
@@MrCosinuus I still don't understand why you say "diminishing returns." If you only memorize move orders, I understand what you're saying, but if you actually understand more openings, then you understand more tactics and ideas about what you can do, about what black can do, and therefore understand positional chess better which (in my opinion) is the most difficult concept to understand.
I agree that tactics are definitely more important, but I don't agree that actually studying chess openings doesn't benefit your middle and endgame. Having an understanding of many different chess openings and positions is incredibly useful to transition from a position you're unfamiliar with, to a position you are familiar with. The more positions you're aware of, the greater the chance you have to convert your current board position to a familiar one. So many games (even tactics) are like this that I'm baffled by the idea of "diminishing returns."
@@insidetrip101 Well, I studied a lot of openings and yes, I also learned many tactics, strategies, setups.... But what you describe is positonal chess, it is related to openings but not the same.
Thank you for sharing this!!
Me taking notes on chess: "King's Indian Defense = Colonoscopy"
"Chump GM" - that cracked me up.
That book (Thinking Fast and Slow) should almost be mandatory.
That book is my favorite book. I use it a lot both in life and in work (game design).
By playing the same openings over and over and analyzing them, you can get a solid enough repertoire anyway, so I mostly agree with GM Kraai. However, if openings are what someone really like, it might get that person to enjoy studying and playing more and it might be more important than anything.
People don't like getting smashed by opening traps so they study to avoid them ... I don't see how that is overvaluing anything. I'd get a lot more satisfaction knowing my opponents aren't going to get a cheap one on me than I would get from a few extra rating points.
Boss, I think I have a different view on how opening prep will affect the outcome of the game . At lower levels, we see the benefits of learning openings because we see that several games ended already in the opening. QGA, black tries to keep the pawn and lose a knight for a pawn. Or he loses a whole bishop, but because white is tactically not good enough black regains the bishop (on c1). Preparation means not only a long sequence of moves until the end of the game, but to know how to punish the opponent’s mistake in the opening. How can somebody plays sharp stuff after 1.e4 e5 without knowing at least some concrete lines?
The real problem with learning openings is that a lot of people don’t work on other parts of the game. A basic opening repertoire will give a player the opportunity to learn in a systematic way, if he works with tactics, endgames and strategy. Nothing wrong about this, I guess.
I don't know if this isn't a bit of confirmation bias speaking. When you bring up the example of intense suffering at the end of an experience being remembered as being worse than the same intense suffering at the beginning of an experience, that would suggest to me that painful endgame mistakes should be what is remembered as especially bad whereas a painfully bad opening that is followed by drawn out suffering in the middle-/endgame should be remembered as less terrible.
I definitely agree about the low probability possibility effect though, makes a lot of sense to me that this plays an important part in people's motivation behind studying openings.
Whilst I have some sympathy for the approac, I think something you are neglecting is that if one studies a particular endgame, the chances of it coming up in a particular game are probably less than 0.1% whereas if one studies e.g. 1.e4 that will come up in 50%+ of games assuming a 1.e4 player. If it doesn't come up, there's a high chance that related positions will come up. For example, the importance of the ...d5 and ...f5 breaks for Black and d4 and f4 breaks for White, recurring tactical themes on the uncastled and castled king... all these things come up far more often than Rook Endings, for example. Maybe 20% of low-ranked games make it to an ending and usually one side already has an overwhelming material advantage.
Would be interesting to think whether the same "pain trauma relation" one might have with an opening, like Jesse has with the KID, also might play a role with certain opponents...
I memorized the Najdorf 28 moves deep, but I keep hanging my queen. Oh yeah, and I'm 1100.
Emphasis here on *over*value. I've found that (at my level) having some opening prep has value. You don't want to get minutes behind on the clock on the 4th move of the game. You should have a plan vs kings gambit, for example. But memorizing 15 move lines is just silly. Unless you're chasing a FIDE title... Tactics and endgames instead.
I’m not patient enough to study openings. But the main advantage I can see is it takes up less mental energy when you have pre planned moves. More mental energy for other (edit ; later) moves
Very interesting thoughts. Based on reflection of my own behaviour as young player: when you are terrible at endgames, bad at strategy and have no idea how to play quiet positions as you train tactics all day, then opening traps and surprises seemingly help you to get good positions which you cant get by other means, or not😜 Bad results? Switch opening😆 i got better when i started to play the London (in 1985 nobody took it serious) and just tried to play good moves. I had not one book about it.
_Thinking fast and slow_ changed my life, great book. I'm still crap at chess though 😑
Part 7 in Jesse's war on opening prep. I'm here for it. I love the energy.
Who hasn't won a chess game because of a trap they learned from some TH-cam video? And I love it when I know the opening better than my opponent, it gives me a definite advantage. The loser is still the one who makes the last mistake, but getting a better position from the opening confers more possibilities. Sure, the elite grandmasters can play garbage against us mere mortals and still win, but against each other they play the top level stuff, with openings memorized out to 20 or 30 moves.
It's an excellent book
i don't agree. clearly it works. i jumped from 1250 to 1400 over a single weekend because I sat down and memorized about 400 opening positions. i would beat my old self in just about every game because of opening prep. must have been the single most productive 4 hours of dedicated training
Explains both gambling and insurance
Wait, Jesse got mated in a Kings Indian up three minor pieces and three rooks?!
I'm not sure it's real position though haha, how that g-pawn got there?
Loosing though having 3 rooks sucks 🤪
I don't get it. You shouldn't bother with preparation because preparation doesn't help you win games. In 10 years only two games have "caused" you the win or the loss.
That seems really short sighted to me. The point of preparation and studying openings is to get you to the middle game with a slight advantage, its not necessarily to just win the game outright. There are tons of reasons other than the game ending with a decisive attack occurring or significant material/positional advantage. Sometimes its just creating an easy weakness in your opponent, or controlling some square or another.
From that perspective, it seems like a good idea to at least have some opening "theory" on what your plan is, or are you saying that planning is stupid too because it might not turn out? I don't know, I just genuinely don't get what your point is, and trying to tie it in with the idea that we remember our experiences irrationally. Ok, fine, but that doesn't "prove" anything. Just because we make decisions based off of irrationality doesn't mean there's not a good reason for that--consider that this mechanism took millions of years of evolution to actually ingrain itself into us. Maybe there's a legitimate reason we *OUGHT* to prepare chess because of these "irrational" experiences because they're so easily preventable just by a little bit of opening theory and memorization.
the point is not that the opening is unimportant, rather it is overvalued
@@ChessDojo fair enough.
I love you Jesse. I’m always on board with your “controversial opinions” on the podcasts. Those millennials don’t get it :P
The position at the beginning of the video certainly is extremely traumatizing - it is illegal.
Anyway, isn't one of the reasons for overrating the opening those hundreds of videos with opening traps?
It's a traumatic memory, which isn't gonna be a real position
0:56 If showboating by promoting to a rook, then being mated is deserved :)
First omg
Hard disagree. Since my return to chess 16 months ago, I have played 1600 blitz games (all as white) and, since I have done ZERO tactics and endgame work, I can confidently attribute my Lichess blitz rating of 1600 and my 55% win rate - solely - to my opening prep. 🤷🏻♂️👍🏽🙏
But you do you, Mr GM! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Finally we get S-Tier chess trolling
@@connormonday 🤣🤷🏻♂️