Re: OT: Chess

The Horny Goat wrote:

On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 17:04:11 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
 

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D wrote:>

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On Fri, 27 Sep 2024, William Hyde wrote:
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Never played that... lately I've been playing the scandinavian. I
will meditate deeply on this!

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I do like the Scandinavian, especially the gambit variation.
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But I see videos on youtube of Magnus playing the rat.  If it gets
popular I'll have to abandon it, perhaps for the Great Snake,
Pterodactyl, or Hippopotamus.

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The hippo is a fascinating device! I have a book on it I haven't yet
gotten around to read. I can't make up my mind if it is madness or
brilliance.

The hippo scored a number of outstanding wins when it was first
systematized in the seventies (it had existed before but only as a "push
all pawns to the third rank" idea).  Ways were found to deal with it and
it's status now is that of an inferior defense.  But it you're not
playing against 2600 level opponents it's still quite playable.
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Usually, since I do not have a lot of time to devote to chess, I prefer
"easy" openings and systems such as the Colle. The colle, although
easily crushed by good players, serves me well when playing other
non-professional and non-amateur players like myself.

The Colle does not lead to a disadvantage for white.  It's problem, from
my point of view, is that it is a strategically unsophisticated opening
which is easy to equalize against.  I enjoyed playing against it as
black as my opening problems were soon over.
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But Colle was no fool, and the opening packs a punch.  It doesn't take
much in the way of carelessness for black to be facing an irresistible
attack after white finally achieves e4.  Nowadays I am weak enough that
I'd probably lose to it against any kind of strongish player.
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American Senior Master (and world poker champion) Ken Smith recommended
that players without the time to learn a lot of theory try either the
Colle or the Stonewall attack as white. When I lived in Texas both were
very popular with players under 2000.
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For variety, you might want to take a look at the Stonewall, both for
white and black.
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William Hyde
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When I was in high school we had a player who was one of the top 3 or
4 players in the club and had fallen in love with the Stonewall. So
the rest of the stronger players (including myself) learned
anti-Stonewall techniques and by the time I had played 100+ speed
games against it and thought I was coming out of the opening against
it with a pretty good game.
 Am not sure I'd be happy playing my system vs anybody 2200+ but then I
don't know any masters who play stuff like that even vs "fish" like

The Stonewall was played by Mr and Mrs Vujosevic in Toronto.  Mr V was well over 2100 but has zero internet presence, not even at chessgames.com where some weaker people of the same name are listed so I can't check his peak rating.  I think but am not sure that he was over 2200.  Mrs V was a WIM, with a top FIDE rating of 2030.
Both were quite skilled at it and I learned a lot about how to deal with it when played by reasonably strong players in our G/15 encounters.
The newsgroups reader I am using won't let me set followups to rec.games.chess.misc (or more likely I just can't figure it out) but you may be able to.
William Hyde

me.