Openings theory – blessing or bane?

Dennis Monokroussos writes: Opening theory, for the chessplayer, is both bane and blessing. By knowing theory, we’re able to understand a lot more than we would by blind groping through trial-and-error; further, if we’re better prepared than our opponents, our chances of a favorable result go up dramatically. On the other hand, keeping up with theory is a real pain in the neck, made both easier (because it’s easier to accumulate and structure) and harder (because of its explosive growth and availability to our foes) at the same time by, among others, the kind folks who bring you this website. Blessing or bane, it’s the situation we’re in. Let’s instead ask who’s to thank or blame for this mess! My answer: Mikhail Botvinnik, the first player to really raise opening preparation into a science. The great player, a former world champion for 13 years (off-and-on) and among the early trainers of Karpov and Kasparov, to mention only some very selective highlights, was not the first player to prepare the openings deeply. What he did do, however, was to analyze them to such a depth, and with an eye not just on the BIG NOVELTY but on reducing many early middlegames to “typical positions”; that is, positions whose strategical content and key plans were well-known to him, though not, of course, to his opponents.

Today’s game, from the historically important USSR-USA radio match in 1945, is an illustration of this sort of deep opening/middlegame preparation by Botvinnik. Arnold Denker, with White, bravely walked into the ultra-sharp and then fairly new Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav. Making all plausible moves, Denker nonetheless lost brutally in just 25 moves. As we go through this game tonight, let’s see if we can learn from these players: not just about the opening in question – though we will learn something about this, one of the most fascinating of all opening variations – but about what true preparation is and how to go about it. Enjoy!

Dennis Monokroussos is 37, lives in South Bend, IN (the site of the University of Notre Dame), and is writing a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy (in the philosophy of mind) while adjuncting at the University.

He is fairly inactive as a player right now, spending most of his non-philosophy time being a husband and teaching chess. At one time he was one of the strongest juniors in the U.S., but quit for about eight years starting in his early 20s. His highest rating was 2434 USCF, but he has now fallen to the low-mid 2300s – "too much blitz, too little tournament chess", he says.

Dennis has been working as a chess teacher for seven years now, giving lessons to adults and kids both in person and on the internet, worked for a number of years for New York’s Chess In The Schools program, where he was one of the coaches of the 1997-8 US K-8 championship team from the Bronx, and was very active in working with many of CITS’s most talented juniors.

When Dennis Monokroussos presents a game, there are usually two main areas of focus: the opening-to-middlegame transition and the key moments of the middlegame (or endgame, when applicable). With respect to the latter, he attempts to present some serious analysis culled from his best sources (both text and database), which he has checked with his own efforts and then double-checked with his chess software.

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