Ah, sorry to hear for your job situation hope it works out for you

I teared off on ligament of my right foot grew back, not as good as it used to be but I'll be fine

Hehe Yeah, same here, can't stick to anything. I hope this time I'll manage to work something out

Hi Armis!
Good to have you back.

Congratulations on your bachelor and good luck with your master.

I was browsing through some of your older contributions to the site. Really enjoyed them. I will be watching some more of your videos when I find the time for it.

About the opening repertoire. Not specializing too much in a certain repertoire or opening is not necessarily a bad thing. Just take a look at Zibbit's games for example. But it is true that a lot of good players did start out with just one solid repertoire while they were climbing the rating ladder. I personally have gotten much better (from class B to expert) since building one solid repertoire and sticking to it. Still working on some of the details and some of the experience I need to gain in tournament play. For busy people who can be occupied for long periods of time with other things (like myself, and most likely yourself too) to do than study chess, one repertoire to fall back on is a nice thing to have. You can always play some different variations in the openings you play for varieties sake or widen your horizon whenever you have the time for it. Personally I based my black repertoire on a nimzo/bogo, hyper accelerated dragon, symetrical english with black (based on a repertoire book and some curtains stuff). My white repertoire is completely my own creation.
Try to look look at other players and find inspiration there (or just copy from a player/book and adjust from there) and then try experimenting a bit with your own idea's. I'm sure you can come up with something. You could for instance take a look at Normunds Miezis's or Sergei Rublevsky's repertoire or (more famously) Boris Avrukh's repertoire. One thing I would like to say is that I often hear people talking they play nimzo/queen's indian. But that doesn't really say much as there are so many ways to go in those openings. I know other nimzo players who get positions on move 4 I have never had. There are so much options and I think that's where most intermediate players get lost.

Hope you'll be okay with the foot and all.

Hi Hiddie!

Thanks

Yeah, I understand what you mean, I figured I should just stick to something instead of trying to decide all the time. Any decision better than no decision so to speak But I somewhat don't like Avrukh's repertoire, I haven't looked too much to be honest but what I have looked at is he recommends fianchetos against basically everything. I figured I will just pick some opening and play what seems to me like the best moves so this way eventually I myself will invent my repertoire (with the aid of books of course). I just feel I am too much concerned about openings, not that they are not important but common, we should really think on our own!

cheers

Hey armis,

Bummers about your foot... That sounds painful. Hopefully it won't keep you off of your skateboard indefinitely.

I've tried Avrukh's repertoire (at least the half of it that was available for a long time -- it's all available now). I found it to be great for correspondence games (a good middle game position you don't understand is better than a lousy middle game position you don't understand...), but there aren't a lot of explanations and I just wasn't getting it overall. I think part of that is he goes for the very best line everywhere (maybe that's why they call it "Grandmaster Repertoire"...) which greatly increases the workload for us mere mortals. I'm starting to believe you really need to be above 2000 or 2200 to really use it effectively.

So what to do? I don't know... Something simple I guess... I just don't know what that is yet...

Play the lines as far as you remember them (which isn't very far for me), then just play the position. Mostly opponents over the board won't even follow theory very far so you're on your own anyway. At least that's how I do it.

thanks hitchhiker

Yeah, I figured I might as well do that and look it up afterwards. I mostly enjoy solving studies now anyway so no openings for me at the moment

hey, you appear to be interested in getting better with your chess. If I can be of help please feel free: http://chesstrainingschool.com/

my contact info is there, any questions I will answer them.

Charles