Improve with repertoire selection? (Openings)

by Southpaw , Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 17:58 (7290 days ago) @ Parsdeclined

? ? I am a Canadian player of around 2000 strength. I have been so for some
? ? time. I have been frustrated so for some time. I keep flipping openings
? ? frequently and getting nowhere quickly. After yet another mediocre
? ? performance at a tournament, I asked a FIDE master bits of advice for
? me
? ? to improve (In addition of course to this wonderful site! ). This
? was
? ? his reply:
? ?
? ? 1) Study the opening well and postions arising from it. He said you
? should
? ? know some endgame stuff but it doesnt really help to learn how to defend
? an
? ? endgame one pawn down if you get blown away in the middlegame by some
? ? opening theory 20 moves deep that your opponent knows well.
? ?
? ? 2) Pick openings that suit your style. To dtermine your style, look at
? ? well annotated games of GREAT masters (GMS of course). Tactical
? ? dragons like Tal,Shirov or positional boa constrictors like
? ? Karpov,Petrosain, Andersson or somewhere inbetween! Looking at modern
? GMs
? ? also give you more up to date theory as well. I like Capablanca but
? all
? ? they played back then was a lot of Queen's Gambit and such. Not much
? ? theory back then on the Sicilian Sveshnikov!
? ?
? ? 3) Once you've got a player with whose style you like, chances are you
? ? will like the opening choices they made too. Hence you can copy their
? ? repertoire because they have done all the work for you! There seems to
? be
? ? logic in his advice. Well what do you think? Any takers?
?
? Hi juggernaut
? As a relative beginner to this game the advice you got sounds reasonable
? to me. I think one of the most daunting aspects of the game for people at
? my level is just what constitutes a 'good' opening. I think from my own
? limited experience I would say 'One that you're comfortable playing.' I
? use Chessbase 9 and it's an awesome program for opening study as you can
? really get in depth reports from the program which allows you to study and
? analyze just about every variation (once you get the hang of the method
? )I love the style of people like Morphy, Fischer and Kasparov, but I'm
? aspiring to great talents way beyond my aspirations, and then some! I
? don't know your preferences, but Judit Polgar has played some great,
? exciting chess in recent times and has a repetoire that someone of your
? talent may well enjoy looking at. Any other advice or opinions would be
? welcome.

The book 'Mastering Chess' by Kopec, Davies et al has this piece of advice being given by Jon Speelman (or Mestel) no less - basically pick a player and steal his repertoire, style etc. The writer suggested Fischer, whereupon Speelman/Mestel said "Ah... Fischer has a very complicated style" and suggests adopting a more straightforward model.

Personally, I'd go with Nigel Short.