An absolutely awful game I have to say.
Avoiding theory as soon as possible will get u nowhere. And after 2.e6 as u mentioned u get a problem bishop and a terrible game.
If u avoid theory early and play a passive move, what will happen is that your opponent will transpose into a position where u have yet to make the moves u allready should have done.
Best case scenario u end up with a draw because u manage to close the game completely.
Start study and use the theory, or be the proud caveman, invent the wheel and praise yourself for your great acomplishment.

Hey Bullrock, The video is not working properly, I don't get to see the video, it just freezes from the first second. The only thing working for me is the audio. Any idea how to resolve this problem?

I have to say avoiding theory appeared to pay off for Bullrock here given that he won. However I do agree with you about Bulrocks atheoretical play. In the long run this won't pay off. I have to say though that you can play anti-theory moves after the first move. e4-e5 isn't theoretical it's just sensible,as is c6. It only becomes book after a few more moves.

Even if you do follow some sort of opening by the book it can soon be in 'non book' territory. I played a game against Robofriven on this site. He played a French Guimard with Nc6 and on move 6 I played Qb3. Rob should have exchanged Q's. But this move wasn't in 'book' and wasn't part of his known line. He moved his Q and Qxb7 forked R+N winning a piece. Rob ran the position after 6.Qb3 through his database. There wasn't a single example of this position!

Playing sensible logical moves may end up in 'book' but that's beside the point if they're solid moves. You can do this in correspondance. Playing as out of book as possible will fail eventually as soon as people realise what Bullrock is up to provided they play better chess!.

The point is that it's THE OPENING which is important for middle strength players not a particular opening line itself. If the opening is played logically and solidly and a middle game is reached the better player will win

However I think Bullrock is winning a lot of games not because of this anti book ploy but because he's playing better chess!

In this game he made less mistakes and worked out the position better. The fact that Bullrock's opening was crap didn't matter because he made less mistakes. That's the point!

the french guimard is 1.e4,e6 2.d4,d5 3.nd2.nc6?!4.nf3,nf6 5.e5! ,nd7 so...6.Qb3 isnt playable...and if u still was able to play 6.qb3 u followed the wrong line of play, look at the pawn-chain and u get an idea what this opening is about, kingside attack, and kingside play.

So if ur out of book early there's a 99% chance ur making stupid moves.

I may sound like an asshole and I apoligize for that, but I really think this line of thinking is what hinders players to become good players. This naive way of thinking that "solid" none-book moves will take u through the opening.

Thanks for responding to this video. One of the reasons I posted it was to try to get some feedback on whether I should continue with my "out of book" experiment or choose an opening and properly study it. I've gotten some feedback in the past that openings don't matter on my level and I have to say that seems to ring true with me now. On my level, even, if I did know an opening say ten moves deep, my opponent could easily and most probably go out of book sooner anyway.

I anxiously await other opinions. Most posts get views, but no comments, but maybe this one will be different.

I don't think you've come across as an asshole. In fact, I welcome your opinions. I want to get better at chess, and anything I can do to speed that up would be that much better. I do have a question, though. At which level would you say openings matter? From the very beginning of one's chess career, or after one has a keen eye for spotting tactics and weaknesses in his opponent's position? This is the heart of the matter for me. Should I devote time to learning openings or do as others have suggested and just focus on tactics and endgames?

When playing the video, did you make it fullscreen? Sometimes on my computer when I make the video go to fullscreen the video pauses and the audio keeps going. To fix it, I just make it go back to normal size again and then make it go fullscreen again and again until it is playing video in fullscreen mode. Usually two or three times of going between full and normal screen modes is all it takes for it to start playing properly. Also, do you have Vista on your computer? I'm just curious because now that I have Vista, I'm encountering bug after bug after bug in many different programs!

Study openings seriously, and study endgames seriously as well.

Play your chessengine for instance (blitz) and play just the opening part, if u have Fritz, or shredder it will give u evaluation of how your position is and also it will say if ur in an opening line, as soon as it doesnt give your current position a name u know ur gone wrong , and the evaluation will start falling.
It all has to do with the balance in the center struggle, king-safety, coordination of your pieces, and pawn-precence and mobility, Time-force -space , as long as u play the best moves u keep the equillibrium.

play game after game, opening after opening, and play a lot of blitz games. this will make u do a 100 or a 1000's of errors and u will learn much quicker, no pain- no gain!

U develop a feel for the opening how thin the line is to walk, if u wanna play with the God's!

At your level you need to keep the opening very SIMPLE. DO NOT get bogged down in opening minutiae as that is a tremendous waste of time.

Here is my "repertoire" for you: ;)
move a center pawn 2 squares on the first move. next move out a knight, preferably your king's knight. in the next few moves move out the other knight, a bishop, and the other center pawn-- in any order that you choose. finally, castle or move the other bishop. A key "rule" is to move only the d and e pawns until you are castled and fully developed, or unless you have a specific reason to move another pawn.

If you deviate from this you are "probably" breaking some kind of principle (unless you know what you're doing). Like your opponent's move 3.a3 is a mistake. Your arrangement c6 d5 e6 is a mistake because you lose a tempo playing c6-c5 and your Queen bishop can be bad, and your kingside development is too slow.

If you follow the above, you will "probably" stay in the book, because this is a principled and classically "correct" way to play chess. The opening probably will have a name, but it doesn't matter what the name is, and you don't need to bother with the name of the opening.. The basic principles are the key.

Even something this simple will get you playing like MORPHY in the opening and will get you quite far. Don't make chess harder than it is. Do NOT play complicated sophisticated (counterintuitive) stuff like Leningrad Dutch or Benoni or the King's indian attack or the Sveshnikov or the Najdorf--- these openings were not even invented until the 1940s and 1950s or later!!! They were not invented by Morphy, Tarrasch, Lasker for a reason! Save such concepts for later, after you have a solid base in classical chess. Arithmetic before algebra.

Emulate Morphy until you are a tactical monster. (OK, tactically competent, lets say 1500.) ALthough honestly a person can get to 2000 playing nothing but strictly classical Tarrasch-approved chess. That means no fianchettoes, no weird Reti flank systems, no moving 5 pawns in the opening liek the Kan Sicilian or the Leningrad Dutch. These are all worthy openings, but they are not "classically correct" openings and thus they are counterintuitive to some degree.

Cant quite remember the move order of this game but I'm just trying to emphasize a point. We are beginer or middle ranking players and trying to remember opening lines by rote is counter productive and I dont think Rob stuck to the line above. Indeed Q b3 wasn't a good move. However my opponent just reacted wrongly expecting something different and blundered. The point is that at our level games are decided 90% of the time by tactics. The whole idea of learning to play THE OPENING is to work out the ideas behind the moves through your own effort and not rely on book lines becuse they have been proved to be sound through master play. 9 times out of 10 you wont get to play that line anyway.

I added this to another thread recently. A Scottish master said that if you are below 1800 spending time on studying openings would not help your game but you should invest in studying tactics. So I'm not just spouting my opinion but that held by a large number of titled players I've spoken to.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I will put these ideas to use, after all, in correspondence games you can have as many simultaneous games as you wish!