Expert: Emperor_Earth - 6/8/2004

Question
I've played casually for many years.  My rating is approximately 1200-1300.  I've found that my ability has plateauxed, and that I'm not really improving that much.  Should I be studying openings and learning the many different lines?  How much of the game is memorization?

Your input would be appreciated.

Answer
This is a typical scenario for many chess players with some experience. There are several reasons why this may have happened. One is that you have gotten comfortable with the players you are playing with, and that you are nto really challenging yourself. The obvious solution is to lose a few times to a better player as an added incentive to try harder. Another is that you haven't played as frequently as you had before. Maintaining a skill requires a lot less work than improving on it. And the final reason may be that your skills have truly begun forming a plateau. This has happened with all that have done chess. This is because chess has become predictable. The best solution to this is to play more! In other words the solution to every scenario of the danger of not improving your skills is to play more and better opponents.

Now on to other methods of improving.
I am not sure of your style of play, or your strengths and weaknesses, so I will try to help as best I can. Studying openings can arguably hone your skills to a new degree, but it really will not be beneficial until you have hit around 1600 in ranking. The reason is simple. By learning many openings, you will, without a doubt, win more chess games. In fact you will win games with people possibly better than you. Because the beginning game is so crucial to the game as a whole, you may gain a decisive advantage in the beginning of various games. Thus you will win games you're "not supposed to", and your higher ranking will mask an actual lack of significantly improved skills. At around 1600, players tend to have actually learned quite a bit more tactically speaking. Also, their fellow peers will by now have started learning openings. Thus they truly do not "gain the upperhand" by learning some openings. Indeed it would hamper them not to. I am basing this ranking thing on the theory that an "average" player has a ranking of 1200. If you would like to pursue openings, then just feel free to reply.

How much of the game is memorization?
Well that's a tricky question. Memorization is no doubt INCREDIBLY useful. If you have played various games and remember the ones in which an opponent destroyed you with his/her moves, those games tend to be extremely vivid in your memory. That is because it is human nature to be extremely competitive, biologically speaking advantageous, and thus any significant defeat will tend to linger a while. Take the time to remember these positions, because if they reappear, you will know which moves NOT to take, and thus not fall into the easy trap. Aside from that, memorization is mostly knowing openings, middle games, and endings and their constitutient lines.

Now what CAN you do to help your skills?
First, study positions that you can gain a tactical advantage over your opponent, usually through the employment of combinations. In other words, start learning how to string various moves together to gain a material advantage, or perhaps a positional one. The latter is a much more difficult concept, and thus reserved for those who devote much of their life to chess.

Next, study the usages of sacrifice. I will here paste a segment that I used to help someone else... Hold on 'cause it's kinda long...
The art of the sacrifice, perhaps chess' most cherished method of utterly insulting your opponent's obvious insuperiorities... (I am only half-joking here) Many new or old people at chess will become often infatuated witht he ability to seem to give up on the game with random "blunders" to astound the opponent with a series of moves that will either checkmate an opponent or render his position utterly defenseless. Do NOT become caught in this trap, I was once. Truth be told there are three reasons to undergo a sacrifice:

1. It looks cool
This is a common trap for many and think that since pros do it I should do it too! Unfortunately these people who undergo sacrifices will quickly find their plans fall amok.
2. The psychological factor
To do this, (don't work too well online so don't try... lol,) it is often best to pretend to be in deep deliberation, and then have your eyes "light up" with a genius move, take the piece and then slam it down emphatically as your sacrifice. This move will unnerve many players, bad and good. A common side effect is that they WON'T take your sacrificial piece! Unfortunately, this move will not impress any that have had much experience, not to say that they are good, just that they've already seen the strategy used before. Nor will this work against the chess master who will not only take the piece, he/she will often find a more devastating combo sure to have you on your knees only a few moves downt the road.
3. Tactical/Positional Reasons
This is obviously the singular choice that would be truly beneficial to the player. There are many subcategories for this as well.
A) The Phony Sacrifice
This is perhaps the most common sacrifice. It is very effective and its ability to humble the opponent underrated. Throughout your 9 year hiatus in chess I am sure you will have become familiar with this term or that of "removing the guard" An example might be if the opponent knight, which is protected by a pawn, is protecting their queen. Your queen is placing pressure on both the knight and the queen, and your rook is placing pressure on the knight. Your queen should not exchange the other queen because say you are down in personnel. Taking the knight would be somewhat stupid. However, if you use the rook to take the knight, now the rook will in danger of being captured by the pawn protecting the knight, but it is also supporting your queen. Your queen can take the opponent queen for free now. Here, if the opponent takes your rook then he/she loses the queen, thus the concept of a phony (fake) sacrifice. If he/she exchanges queens then you can recapture with your rook and thus essentially taking a knight for free, thus the concept of "removing the guard." As you can see there are many many applications of this tactic, and thus it is often overlooked when examining the famous games, because it is so dull and cliche.
B) Positional Sacrifice
This is the one where you will sacrifice pieces of more value for pieces of lesser value in hopes of maintaining an insurmountable positional advantage. This is perhaps the least commonly seen of all sacrifices and the most dubious. Few people have mastered this art, as it requires a profound understanding of positional principles. If you would like an example, I can point you to the one who is likely the greatest chess player of all time, Gary Kasparov. I cannot remember the exact game, but I remember that he make the move a4, then Ra3, and then exchanged the rook for the light-bishop. The result was that he acquired an insurmountable advantage of the white squares, which he was able to exploit and defeat his opponent to the amazement of various critics of that move.
C) Ultimate sacrifice
This is the classic sacrifice. A series of shocking sacrifices which lead to a quick checkmate. Perhaps the most famous is where two bishops, and a rook are sacrificed with both knights already off the board. The result was a checkmate with the rook and the queen. In order to understand this sacrifice, you must understand how the checkmate is achieved. Most positions tend to be extremely tight and closed after the castled position. The purpose of sacrifices is often to open up the area surrounding the king and then deliver the final blow, a checkmate. Perhaps the most common lines are those of the "Greek gift." This is a topic in itself and a simple search through Google will provide ample answers. This form of sacrifice actually is often ill-advised, because if the opponent correctly masters the urge to take all the pieces and take only a few then the plan will already be ruined. Sacrifices here usually only serve to open up the board and use up already dormant pieces thus only threat in the moderate to long-term game plan.

I hope I have answered your question. You asked on queen sacrifices and I know I have answered on sacrifices in general. I felt that this is the better way of responding, because queen sacrifices are based on the same principles as the regular ones, just even more ill-advised... Use sacrifices only if they will help your game, otherwise your rating will pay.

A place to see the relative successes of various opening moves is a very nice opening move explorer found online @:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer

The only problem I have with this site is that while it shows you the games played and the relative winning percentags of all sides and draws in the specific openings, some of the games seem to have been played with those of "lower" mental capabilities... A long story short, some games are sad and pitiful to watch and thus some of the winning percentages may be off by a bit. Nonetheless overall it is a very good site and most games are of the smarter ones and you can study the latest moves, as it is updated quite often. A nice extra in the thing is that if you go to:
http://www.chessgames.com/index.html
you can type in the opening in the top search box and then see the prevalence of the opening, and see if it's declining or ascending in popularity. I use this site every now and then to catch up on the trends in chess. Hope I helped, and feel free to ask if I didn't fully answer anything or you got more questions.