openings - study techniques

i once drove 80 miles to a tournament only to lose my first game in 6 moves. at our level, i feel the most important goal of an opening is to reach a balanced middle game with fighting chances. because i don't have much time to study openings i'm trying to build a repertoire that is not too steeped in theory and not so offbeat that i get crushed. i'm impressed by players that can play 1. e4 or 1. d4 depending on their mood - but that's not me. i'm a 1. e4 player (and i reply to 1. e4 with 1... e5, and this gives me the chance to mention my first resource. it's a book by GM John Emms called 'Play the open games as black'. i don't have many books, but this one is really good. it's actually a useful resource for players of the white and black pieces, and often gives 2 alternative moves in a position: one that is solid and one that is more double-edged.

when it comes to chess books, no-one tells you how to read them. this may sound like a daft comment but i've experimented with using a magnetic chess set on a plane, at home with a regular board and in front of the computer. i still don't know what is best. there's something to be said for sitting in front of a real board (it makes me think more thoroughly and might help in tournaments by creating a 'search image'). but a chess engine is helpful because sometimes a book will not suggest a move that i think should be played. having an engine handy is useful for knowing what the refutation is.

this brings me to my second resource, the chess engine. in the past i used PC computers and had fritz 5 installed. this had some great features, the best of which was that it would annotate games using language (e.g. 16...Bxd3 - this is where Black starts to go downhill) rather than just reeling off variations. as i graduated to using a mac i started using Shredder Classic, which is pretty good. But there are plenty of engines (and GUIs - graphical user interfaces) out there that are free to download and are more than sufficient for players of our strength. I currently use Glaurung (www.glaurung.com)

i think it is important to read through opening ideas fairly frequently and to test yourself by closing the book and seeing if you can navigate through the variations without having a 'prop'.

i'm thinking about openings because i have a tournament coming up in a few weeks (i'll post about that later) and i haven't played competitively for a while. i'd love to hear about your methods of studying openings and preparing for tournaments. until next time - happy chessing!