Practical opening preparation

 Is it Parkinson's Law that says 'work expands to fill the time available for its completion'? On the basis of my efforts to annotate recent games, he may have been onto something. Our latest trip back in time takes us a whole 17 days into the past, when I was once again at CCF for the Summer Cup; the third round but only my second game after I took a bye to go to Bristol. I was playing Dominic Warner (147/1705) with white - a pairing that came up not long ago, in the final round of the CCF Easter Congress. I won quickly, but certainly not on account of the opening, which was a disaster for me. This time, with all weekend to prepare, I determined to come to battle somewhat better-armed.

 It is well known that the critical line against the Scheveningen Sicilian is the Keres Attack (6. g4), and it seemed inconceivable to try anything else. The volume of theory was a problem though - how can one learn it all over a weekend? The short answer is that you can't. The long answer is that you can learn a fair bit. Patterns are crucial - a default response to such-and-such a move, a plan against standard schemes of development (or lack thereof!) and so on. To this end I used an opening tree and inputted all the serious lines into ChessBase by hand - both picking up these ideas and mapping out the main-lines. This is a method I have used many times before; usually I can do it in a day if I work hard, though remembering everything can be challenging. This time it worked well and I played our last game in reverse: my position from the opening was so massive that even rather unsteady play in the second half of the game didn't change things.

 For me, it is interesting how I deliberately ignored my preparation on move 8 and played something else, just to get a position I felt I understood better: a practical decision, but richly rewarded. It's surprising how black did not do much that was blatantly wrong, and yet still slid into an appalling position rather quickly: no wonder the top players don't hazard the traditional move-order much nowadays. Of course it was a great shame to reject the lovely 16. Nd5!! after looking at it for so long, and on account of a fairly insignificant line at that, but at least I am looking at the right moves even if not always playing them - it's a start though there are still signs of a lazy player at heart. Witness my 22nd move, which on a different day might well have cost me a half-point. But it was heartening to be able to persuade Fritz that the treatment of the position I felt was right was indeed superior to its suggested alternatives: even in the computer age, logic has a place in chess!

 The next game was even shorter than this one, and didn't consist of tons of opening preparation, so perhaps I can get it out a little more quickly. But we shall see...