A radical opening experiment: The results

For an exact description of the experiment, I refer to an earlier post:

https://lichess.org/@/DaBassie/blog/a-radical-experiment-with-my-opening-repertoire/x8dWuCVd

Basically, I started forcing myself playing openings I knew existed, but that I always avoided. So, that came down to a lot of 1. e4 and queensgambits (as white), and a lot of 1. ...e5 and 1. ...c5 (as black). To be fair, it could go in many directions. There really are many different playable openings in chess.

Just a quick note: I wrote most of the upcoming text a few months ago, but then life happened, and I never bothered to finish it... Until now! That may sound very dramatic, but it’s mainly about my days being filled with enough text-editing software already. Very dry, very boring text editing, lol. So, well, I hope everything still makes sense a few months later.

I did not really have any special expectations before the start. My guess would have been that I would possibly drop a few points, but hardly anything noticeable. However, the opposite happened. (Hooray for science, I guess...) I managed to fight myself into the middle-to-high 2300’s. From experience, I would say that’s more or less my average level. Then, things started going well. Consistently well. And I felt magic was about to happen. The 2360’s turned into 2370’s, which became 2380’s that soon became 2390’s and after a few more games, the unimaginable happened: I dropped all the way back to 2350. Darn it...

After this unprecedented sequence of luck by my opponents, and not at all because of any tilt from my side (again, the absence of any form of tilt cannot be emphasized enough here), I finally broke the 2400 barrier. Then, I did the only sensible thing one can do in such circumstances: I stopped playing and stopped washing my mouse-hand for a week, whilst being particularly happy with myself.

I have reached the divine realm of the 2400’s a few times before, but it’s really my limit. Doing this with completely random openings is insane to me. I think I can safely state therefore that choice of opening has absolutely no (negative) impact on my performance.

But the story doesn’t end there. The call of duty forced me to slowly pick up chess with some hectic Bundesliga games. After mentally having said farewell again to the beautiful 2400-level, I was happily surprised to actually win my first game. And the second one... And a few more. And in the end, the beloved rating number clocked in at 2458. So, it’s time to desperately search for an explanation for these unexplainable events.

Some highly scientific comments

Some experimental scientists in the crown might have some objections to the methods applied. To those I would like to say: this is a Lichess blogg, not some fancy journal. Your scientific expectations are really unrealistically high... But I must admit, stopping an experiment exactly at its peak is probably bad (I think this has a name, but I forgot). Also, Bundesliga games where everyone, except me, goes berserk (literally and metaphorically) are generally speaking good for scoring big rating.

But I reached the initial 2400 legitimately. I did play many games, so perhaps I just ‘played myself into good form’. I also chose the best time control God has ever invented: 3+2. The increment makes life good, and preserves my sanity in the meantime. So the conditions were pretty optimized. But that has always been this way, also the previous times I broke the 2400-barrier. So I think it’s pretty fair to state that the experiment is performed reasonably fairly.

Some selection of games

In total, I played roughly 250 games within the experimental period. I hoped the personal Lichess opening-explorer could give insights which openings worked well for me, but the differences are so small, that this didn’t really tell me much. The openings-tree branches too much and too fast to make N=250 statistically large.

But I do have some nice examples of games. The unusual openings did induce some severe blunders from me... I liked to call those ‘happy little accidents’. I saved some. I created a study, and those wanting to have some good laughs can go through them. These accidents were very rare, though. And moreover, in blitz you can just play on, and still get chances nevertheless.

https://lichess.org/study/by/DaBassie (Posting a link to an entire study doesn't seem to work for me, so to find it, you have to select it manually from here.)

More frequently, I would not understand the middlegame resulting from an opening sufficiently, and I just get a bad position. Also here, all is not lost, and you just continue playing. Much can happen, especially in blitz. Besides that, bad positions also happen sometimes when playing more familiar openings.

The opposite could also happen, that I got a really nice game out of an unfamiliar opening. In an amazing display of linguistic creativity, I started naming these games ‘good accidents’.

But by far most commonly, I just got pretty ‘normal’ chess games. When I unknowingly played a line that ‘didn’t exist’, the opponent usually had no clue what to do either, and we just play. Especially with white there’s a million ways to go astray without actually losing any advantage according to the Stockiest of Fishes. When you start paying attention to it, it’s actually remarkable how often the opponent actually deviates from the main lines. It was for sure not always me. And a large selection of games people just play some random ‘quite systems’, and these games tend to go out-of-book pretty fast too usually. In conclusion, a large majority of games are just not decided by any opening theory whatsoever.

Observations whilst playing

Apart from the pure statistical results, I also noticed some other unexpected ‘psychological’ effects.

I found that I really quickly developed new opening habits that I had to extinguish by force. For example, I played the Scotch once, and then I almost unconsciously started to play the Scotch all the next games. There’s plenty of alternatives besides 3. d4, but my brain just wanted to continue with something I had done before, in a desperate search for familiarity. Like many others, I sometimes quickly check the opening book afterwards to check whether I did anything stupid, and perhaps my mind interpreted this 30-second learning session as me being suddenly an expert in that given line. It’s like: I now know what I’m supposed to play on the fourth move, so let’s try it immediately, and nothing else...

The theme here seems to be memorization versus creativity. Non only memorization of just moves, but also common themes within a given opening. Using memory is easier for the mind (I postulate): you don’t have to rethink everything every time. It’s the way of least resistance, and if I learned anything this life, it’s that people are professionals in finding the absolute bottom of any potential energy well they found themselves caught in. In blitz, it’s even a lot faster, so you get rewarded somewhat. However, memorization robs us of the possibility to explore totally new ideas. It feels sometimes this is the reason people get stuck at a certain level. Not having memory of the position helped a lot with thinking creatively; exploring many moves already very early in the game.

Naturally, this costs time. I was already the slowest player on Lichess, but doing this opening stuff made it pretty laughable. Having 1 minute left against my opponents full time was surprisingly common. On paper, this shouldn’t be worth it, but I honestly felt it was. I feel like I play much better with sub-1 minute in the creative mindset, than playing with 3+ minutes in the memorization mindset.

Final comments

Would I dare to do this in classical chess? Ehh... I must confess that every tournament I promise myself to throw in an 1. e4, but I just don’t do it. But after all of this experimenting, I really think I should try it.

In classical we have more time. Does this favor the memorizator, or the improviser? Hard to say. Perhaps the former... Improvising is difficult in the opening, because you have to do it after each move again. The memorizator can just wake up from his state when he notices a unfamiliar move. Then he can try to find a refutation. This feels more dangerous with more time than with less. In blitz, people just keep playing fast, and you can get away more easily with dumb stuff.

There is also another totally different interpretation of the results. A pretty ironic one... Perhaps my favorite openings that I used to play, are just extremely poor. I mean, I didn’t see any exchange Trompovski’s or financhettoed Birds at the latest world championship. Or in any world championship, for that matter. Perhaps my usual openings give me such dreadful positions, that me completely butchering a principled Spanish setup, is the lesser evil. People with highly developed opening knowledge would possibly suffer more from such an experiment.

Recommendations and outlook

With all these thoughts out of the way, I am going to make a very controversial advice. I recommend everyone to just play whatever openings. Both experienced players as new players. I know this is completely the opposite of ‘established’ theory (I don’t know who established it in the first place, but all people seem to just say it), but it just feels right. It’s fresh, it’s fun and it gives the brain some exercise.

I will for sure continue this, hopefully even in tournament play. And let’s be honest: very convincingly playing the first three moves, only to dive into a 30-minute think for the fourth main-line move, is psychologically always the winning play. It has been said, that the best swordsmen in the world only fear the swordsmen that swing their swords around like a maniac.