GM Surya Ganguly - Teaching Openings for Real Chess Improvement

Okay.

So before I get into my one E4 course, I want to address one thing that you said that, you know, like memorization is important for let's say adult improvers or at the very beginning, you may not understand everything.

Now, that would be 100% applicable if chess was designed in such a way that you play the opening and then immediately the result is declared based on the evaluation.

Like after 15 moves, hey, you got 0.30, so you won the game.

Yes, then you should just memorize because it matter ends there.

You know, this is...

But let's not forget opening is just even like...

I would say it's 2%.

Like then you jump into the, like from the swimming pool, now you're into an ocean, right? And I always ask my student, find me your 30 last games that you lost and show me one game where you lost because of opening, you made one mistake and you did not get a second chance.

And now let us see how many games you lost because you made a mistake later.

Now we will see again if there are 30 games like this, maybe 29 games we are losing because things are happening at later stage, not because we played some dubious move in the opening.

Now let's think about how you are practicing.

If you are practicing four hours a day, eight hours a day, 10 hours a day, it doesn't matter.

What is the percentage you are giving to opening and what is the percentage you are giving to this unknown sides, middle game, end game? Because once again, that comes back to the same thing.

We want, we feel, at least psychologically, we feel better prepared where we can control things.

now you cannot control middle game you can how do you train for uncertainty how do you train to train yourself to pick uh moves from five equally good looking moves

so

it's not easy to develop your intuition or understanding while it's very easy to memorize bunch of things and then just keep on doing that but that is just a tiny part of the chess now coming back to uh why uh Well, I cannot claim my courses are very different from other courses because there are so many good courses.

And honestly, I have not watched every course, so I do not know the teaching method.

But I consider, and I tell this in every single video, I consider all my opening courses a complete failure if it is not helping you to understand the game better.

So when I'm presenting a video, when I'm making a course, I emphasize a lot that when you listen through the, you know, you go through the entire video, you will improve as a player.

And the idea, like I want you to forget the moves.

If you, like imagine you are taking a class from me individually, I will ensure that your core understanding of a certain opening, let's say an add-off, Why am I playing a6? You should know that.

Why am I playing knight f3 and d4? You should know that.

Once you know that, and once your general understanding is developed, I'm completely fine if you freestyle over the board.