I finally seem to have created some basis for future developments.
In the past 24 years I have paid little attention to other parts of the game than tactics. Now I seem to book some results in that department, the omissions start to show themselves.
I work like a madman to repair the holes and to get the water out.
Of course it is an insane idea to throw all your openings out of the window and to replace them all at the same time at once. Especially when you do that so rigorously that you start all over again when an opening doesn’t work out as you thought it would. Throwing an effort of two years out of the window. That happened quite a few times.
Opponents seem to have a nose for the holes in my repertoire. Or they avoid the main lines that I trained, or they throw obscure gambits at me that take too much time to learn the theory. Or they play rare openings that I only encounter once every five years. The past two years I encountered the Dutch Defense six times, while a friend of mine hasn’t seen it in six years. And an anti Dutch system isn’t in my repertoire yet.
Slowly a secure opening repertoire emerges which act as a stabile basis from where I can plug the holes one by one. Matters are less complicated when you don’t feel obliged to throw whole variations out of the window time and again, but only to plug the holes where it leaks.
Last weekend I spend two days to choose a way to combat the dutch defense.
With white I play the Colle/Barry/London family of openings, so it is logical to start with 1.d4 f5 2.Nf3 against the Dutch.
With black I’m not so far yet. The French Defense is a keeper, which makes 1.d4 e6 a logical response to d4. But when white refuses the invitation to go into the French, I haven’t decided on the best route yet. I hope to get more clarity this summer, when I play another tournament.
All in all, a stable basis starts to emerge. For the first time I get usable feedback from my games. I play for instance 1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 Bg4 Ne5. Just because it is advised by some grandmasters. It is aiming at gaining the bishop pair, and indeed I managed to get the bishop pair a few times. That showed another hole in my boat: I don’t know how to play with the bishop pair. But at least I’m trying AND learning. Knowing what the problem is, is much better than just fiddling around with moves with no clue what you are after.
Another hole that showed itself is the vulnerability to knight forks. In time trouble I tend to overlook those pesky beasts. So I have created a database with knight forks lately.
Furthermore, I slowly build on the scenarios that belong to the tactics department. It is not that I now throw masterpieces of tactical combinations to my opponents time and again. But slowly I start to become more confident. In the past, my positional plans were always spoiled by some tactics. Now I’m more often than not able to pursue my positional goals. Often showing that I followed the wrong plan, but hey, it is a step further, mind you!
So progress is slow, albeit I work like a madman. One day it will pay off.
