The Abysmal Depths of Chess

June 1988, Position G Black to play Contributions are welcome in the comments box. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move. Scroll down when you’re ready to see what the Beat the Masters panel chose and the points scored for each move. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I remember my friend Tom telling me that playing Open Sicilians was good for developing players back in 2008 around the time he wrote this blogpost . He was one of the best improved adult chess players in England that year, and I knew the idea originated from Rowson, so what he had to say was obviously worth listening to. Not that I did. In my defence, my objection was partly practical. You might want to play Open Sicilians, but in club chess - at my level anyway - you’re far from guaranteed to get 2 Nf3 and 3 d4 after you answer 1 e4 with 1 ... c5 . I don’t know the answer to the question raised by the title of ...

A few months ago, I advised a student of around 2000 strength to try to analyse one complicated game deeply and carefully. I asked him to keep on honing and revising his findings until he felt confident that I wouldn’t find any major mistakes in his analysis. I encouraged him not to use analysis engines until he had given it his best effort. He was not allowed to make generalizations about the position and not allowed to stop with the assessment that the position was 'unclear' unless he could demonstrate the effort he had made to find clarity.  He is a diligent student and keen to improve, but looking at a complicated game in depth until he understood it move by move, variation by variation, proved to be too much for him. He devoted a few study sessions to this task, a couple of hours at a time, but he came back to me and said that he was 'scared' to do any more. Whenever he tried to look at the position without prejudices he felt 'lost' and 'helples...