The bad news is that Fischer was so successful because he was
studying chess openings beyond his 1.e4 repertoire. That means to master the
chess openings you will have to do the same.
But there's good news.
First, there are software tools that level the playing field,
programs that Bobby Fischer couldn't dream of when he played that world
championship match.
Then there are electronic versions of all the important master
games, hundreds of thousands of them, available for free on the internet,
already sorted by ECO opening codes.
So you get free lightspeed access to the openings of the
world's best players.
But that's bad news because everyone else has free
access too. And you have to use all that information to form your own plan.
One idea is to play the best moves from master games according
to statistics. It sounds reasonable that playing the moves that grandmasters use
in their winning games would lead to nearly flawless play in the chess openings.
But it doesn't work! Believe me, masters love to play
weaker players who play memorized openings from master games. The masters know
these openings as well, and the weaker player will give them very few surprises.
If you're already a master and you want to know how statistics
can cause you to lose games and embarrass yourself then
click here but come back here for
the solution.
If you're not a master and you want more good news about how
you can easily master the chess openings anyway then...
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