Building a Repertoire (Part 2)

Learning our way around town

Welcome back to Chess in Small Doses, a Substack about adult improvement in chess. Today I’m returning to the topic of an opening repertoire. Early on I published a piece on building a repertoire. Since then, a few things have changed for me. Today I’m taking on how we can build a repertoire that we can actually remember and use? Spoiler - you can’t find it online. You have to make an opening map that lives in your head. Let’s get into it.

(P.S. I started working on the piece weeks ago. In the meantime, Junta Ikeda published a fantastic article on opening preparation. Seems we were dwelling on the same topic. Go read it, it’s worth it. )

Do Openings Matter?

Opening studies is an area of some controversy. Do openings matter below 1800 (or even 2000)? The short answer of course is yes, but the real question is how much do they matter compared to other things? There’s no point in studying the Spanish when you miss a simple knight fork. The relative importance of openings for most amateurs is fairly low compared to tactics and game analysis.

However the appeal is understandably intense. Lose just one game to some annoying gambit and you’ll have a powerful urge to study the refutation 15 moves deep so it never happens again. It’s almost like getting into an argument and then later looking up reasons for why you’re right, fully intending to set the records straight!

In his book, The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin noted how some people try to win the game before it has even started through their opening prep. That line stuck with me as I can admit I have tried this. One of my earliest coaches suggested I play sharp openings where I gambit a pawn to gain a lead in development. I spent a fair amount of time learning the Grunfeld and the Evan’s Gambit, trying to memorize the critical lines 10-12 moves deep. Turns out that’s not my strong suit. It was like trying to give a speech written by someone else with widely different speech patterns than mine. Often it felt alien, even though I would get good positions on the board. Credit to him, his opening files were excellent. Still, I really couldn’t make them work for me no matter how many times I’d drill the lines.

I have come to believe that opening study matters to improvement, perhaps even a great deal. I’m not saying that tactics and calculation aren’t the most important. But I’ve come to believe that becoming familiar with openings can pay dividends.. A repertoire can give you one clear and significant advantage: You can steer the game towards a familiar position quickly which helps you to save your time for the critical middle game and endgame decisions to follow.

Know Thyself

To make a repertoires, it’s helpful that we understand our strengths and weaknesses. That knowledge really only comes with playing and losing first. Analyzing those games will show you where you were comfortable and where you weren’t.

In his book Thinking Inside the Box, Jacob Aaggaard proposed two dimensions of chess players: Logical or Intuitive and; Technical or Dynamic. From that he comes up with four categories of players.

1. Logical and Technical (Botvinnik, Gelfand, Korchnoi)

2. Logical and Dynamic (Kasparov, Topalov)

3. Intuitive and Technical (Karpov, Carlsen)

4. Intuitive and Dynamic (Tal, Anand)

Now I make no claims to be able to tell the difference between one or the other, but at least one of these rang true for me: Intuitive. I don’t really think through positions so much as I feel them. I look for ideas and try to make them work, but the ideas don’t come from a logical breakdown of the position, just a sense of what move might work. I often wish I was a more logical player, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I also tend to opt for the safe choices, the “good enough” moves which makes me think I’m more technical than dynamic but I’m not sure I would know the difference.

Aaggaard described the strengths and weaknesses of intuitive players:

“ These players get a lot for free, but they have a tendency to be sloppy. The areas they will usually have to work hard on are the areas that require accuracy - opening preparation, learning theoretical endings and, especially, calculation.”

This matches with my experience of my games and play. I struggle being accurate in all the places he mentioned. I for the life of me cannot recall opening theory accurately beyond 4-5 moves. Sooner or later, some idea pops into my head that looks interesting or seems logical but is terrible for the position. For example, in a recent OTB game I had this position.

Against the Dutch, White has a clearly superior move here which is h4!?. In the Lichess DB it wins at 60%. I knew h4 was a good move but for some reason I played Nf3? which is natural but far worse since it blocks the Queen. Compounding my mistake, I still played h4 and then h5 like a stubborn mule determined to not be moved. Somehow I was able to win that position but only thanks to my opponent blundering.

So if accuracy and calculation is not my strong suit (yet) then maybe the Grunfeld or unforgiving gambits aren’t right for me. That gives me a clear signal on how to start building a repertoire. I will need openings that are solid but forgiving, based on structures rather than specific moves so I can find my way “home” during a game. Your style might be different.

(If you’re curious, Aaggard described the Logical players as good calculators, but players who need to develop an understanding of the game. They have natural talent for working systematically but struggle to understand strategy and positional play.)

Making A Map

Imagine if you moved to a new town. You’re unfamiliar with the roads, highways, and landmarks. How would you find your way around? You can simply turn on your phone and have it tell you where to go. You could just Uber or Waymo everywhere (if that’s an option). You could buy a map and study it. You could find some YouTube videos talking about your new town. Or you could even hire a local tour guide to show you around. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to learn it on your own. We eventually must make a map in our heads. In my experience, this is where many repertoires fail. For example, take this position:

This is from my 3rd OTB game ever. I had played the Evan’s Gambit and gotten the dream position where White is up +1. Black’s last move was Bg4, which doesn’t help the situation. I was using my coaches repertoire which I had studied closely. However, I only knew how to get here but I didn’t know what to do next. White has many winning moves with the idea is to push the advantage in piece activity and king safety. However, at the time I was a brand new OTB player, and I didn’t get it. Dear reader, believe it or not I went on to lose this game! I fumbled away the advantage I had worked so hard to gain because I had no idea what to do next. In my experience, this can happen to anyone when you’re using someone else’s repertoire.

We learn best in one of two ways: 1) by doing things ourselves and; 2) by teaching others. For a repertoire we’re going to have to use both but let me recommend that we start doing it on our own as soon as possible. Why start when you don’t know any theory or any of the moves? Because that’s the best time to start learning one move at a time. Theory is great to guide our choices and to highlight potential pitfalls, but let’s have a moment of honesty. Most people reading this will be under 1800 ELO. Very few players are going to follow theory for more than 5-6 moves at most. This has a huge impact on how to build a repertoire.

Wide Not Deep

In Mastering Opening Strategy, GM Hellsten recommends a simple approach. Make an opening file and simply fill it with whatever moves you can remember. Lichess Studies are great for this. Don’t turn on the engine yet and don’t have the database open. Just put in whatever moves you can recall until you have an empty move tree. Go as wide as you can, but my recommendation is keep it only 4-5 moves deep. Later, go back and fill in each move with your own words why that move is your choice. Teach yourself why that move works. Then look at the position and try to explain why other natural looking moves don’t work. Write as if you were teaching someone 400-500 points lower than you. Simple language is better, with concrete variations.

For example…

In the Caro Kann Advanced Variation Black can play an early 3…c5 to start the counter play. I chose this line because it is more forcing and reduces White’s potential responses. If Black instead plays the Classical 3…Bf5 , White has at least 10 different options including the very challenging h4 Tal Variation. Black must be very precise as some of those lines are not very forgiving. The move c5 is an alternative to Bf5, and a temporary pawn sacrifice. White can simply take on c5 and then Black will try to get the pawn back. For a repertoire it’s not enough to memorize the right move, we need to be able to explain why. Of course White has other options other than dxc. Black will need to be ready for moves including c3, Nf3, Ne2, and Be3.

What I hope you see is that we’re only 3 moves into the game and we need to be prepared for 5 possible different branches. Knowing something 12-15 moves deep isn’t our goal. Our goal is to be familiar with all the different directions we can go in the first 4-5 moves. If we know that, we can steer the game to familiar structures.

In the book What It Takes To Be a Chess Master, Andy Soltis mentioned that Masters “know what they want” from a position. That only happens when someone can fully understand the difference between one line and the other. In my opinion this is what having a “wide not deep” approach to our repertoire gives us. We get to understand the our options and our plans after the opening better.

The Caro-Kann Two Knights variation. Black has the standard move of Bg4 h3 Bxf3 Qxf3 e6 here making a pawn triangle on f7-e6-d5-c6-b7. However there’s also the interesting idea of dxe4 Nxe4 Nf6!? trying to steer into the Tartakower structure with doubled pawns on f7 and f6. Which structure would you choose?

Never Over

Once you have the empty move tree and some comments about why you prefer one move to the other, now we can search out other resources. Model games are great for this, showing you how master players used the resulting structure to their advantage. Books, Chessable courses, videos, and our own game analysis are steps we can take to grow our repertoire. But it needs to be done one move at a time, and again with clear understanding why that move is played over others. In this, our work is never done. Our opening prep is never over. There’s always new ideas to learn… but only if you can understand them. No point in pushing h4 if you don’t know the follow up or why it helps you in this specific position. Chess is after all a concrete game. Each move needs to have a purpose.

Making a repertoire means making active choices, starting small, and trying to teach ourselves why the moves do or don’t work. It’s not a memory contest, but rather deepening our understanding of how the pieces best work together. Working on my repertoire has helped my time management, even if I’m “out of book” by move 5. My goal for my repertoire is simple: to have a familiar starting point for the middle game as often as possible. Our opponents throw many different lines against us, that this is challenging enough. (Example - Black to play, what would you do?)

Thank you for reading. I hope it was helpful. I’ve been playing and training a lot more lately so writing has taken a step back. I greatly enjoy writing though, and hope to come back with a few more posts soon. Let me know what you’ve done on your openings and if you agree or disagree with what I’ve written. Wishing you good luck with your chess! Until next time!