The Black Vault

You're right of course, you really can't, I think that's why we need to see this in use in some games to see how frrosted gets into that intended position when against an opponent who doesn't want to let him have the time to to do what he wants.

I'm trying to figure out how to see that opening.

Maybe if I just say black will move pawns only for the first 12 moves that should be easy notation-wise and then I'll see white's position.

What would be nice is a screenshot of how that looks after move 12.

See if this works.



EDIT: This is not quite right, the rook should be on c1, otherwise I think it's correct.

As a position it looks lovely, with the queen and bishop battery and the other bishop all staring at the black kingside, but you have some work to do to get into that position without the opponent doing anything about it.

Now to figure out how to counter it...

A couple of things.

If black can exchange the knight at f3, white really has no defenders on the kingside. Another thing, black can look to undermine white's pawns on the queenside by moves like a5, and so on, and get good play that way. I think I played this in the game against frrosted where he played an opening basically the same as this, although that was a good game until frrosted made a mistake so it wasn't necessarily the opening at fault. I think he was doing well until then if I remember right.

humphreys wrote:Hi Frrosted.

This is quite similar to the opening you played against me a while ago, so I take it you're trying to refine the general idea from before?

My honest opinion is that the opening might not work so well against anyone who plays standard textbook chess. In an example I played out, I simply played very standard with black and worked on controlling the center, getting quick piece development, and castling kingside early.

Thanks so much for your time, it really means a lot. Ok I didn't want to hit you with all my ideas at once, but your comment about white and the trouble with castling. My intent is not to castle at all. In most games, white attacks the king-knight via queenside fianchetto or by moving to g4. As you can see, with my queen parked on c2, it would be a tempting idea to exchange that bishop for my knight, doubling my prawns on the recapture. But here is my idea: after that happens and it usually does, I move my king to e2! I have a nice little nest of prawns around my king and now the queen rook is free to join in the kingside attack, with an open g-file to exploit! Castling actually hurts my effort.

Now the idea here is to whip up a devasting kingside attack with almost all of my pieces active, wasting very few moves, and unless black is an 1800+ player, he has usually wasted a few moves, queenside prawn-pushes, whatever, and before he knows it, he is overwhelmed. I push the king rook prawn up to bust up his defenses and in the final scenario I have both rooks bearing down on him, both bishops pointed at him, a queen in front of a bishop continually threatening mate, and one or both knights jumping around with a king-rook-prawn missile being fired to wreck his wall.

The things that have caused me the most problems so far are well-defended center-posted prawns clogging my bishop diagonals (but remember I have a queen and king prawn poised to bust that up as they have hardly advanced), a king side fianchetto with queen and knigh support, or a very aggressive queen side attack.

Thoughts? I hope I'm not being too selfish asking you to dedicate more time.

humphreys wrote:See if this works.



EDIT: This is not quite right, the rook should be on c1, otherwise I think it's correct.

As a position it looks lovely, with the queen and bishop battery and the other bishop all staring at the black kingside, but you have some work to do to get into that position without the opponent doing anything about it.

Final scenario: Put the king on e2. Take away the king night and replace it with the prawn that was on g2. Then if you want you can slide the queen's rook over to g1. Or at the very least, put the queen's rook on c1 where it belongs. The attack begins at that point launching the king rook prawn and making a knight move to open up a diagonal. The queen can also switch to the black diagonal when convenient.

Also, early in the opening I am attacking black's prawn on e5. One fairly subtle trap is when he uses his queen's knight to defend that prawn. A simple prawn-push to b5 dislodges the knight and wins me a free prawn. I've won a few games by scoring a free prawn early and then if nothing else, trading down and grinding it out.

humphreys wrote:

at1with0 wrote:How many moves are in your opening?

After my first move, all other moves are dictated by opponent's response... IOW I don't think I'd ever use an "opening" that consisted of three or more moves.

If you've found a good one that long or longer, by all means share away...

(I'm at chess.com btw)

If you like openings where it doesn't matter what the opponent does so much, look at the King's Indian for white and black. Any fianchetto opening is going to allow you to more or less stick to your planned moves for 4-5 turns at least.

Also the Colle System.

I use the King's Indian Defense all the time and I have a book on the King's Indian Attack as it is one of my favorites.

humphreys wrote:See if this works.



EDIT: This is not quite right, the rook should be on c1, otherwise I think it's correct.

As a position it looks lovely, with the queen and bishop battery and the other bishop all staring at the black kingside, but you have some work to do to get into that position without the opponent doing anything about it.

95% of my games, black does nothing to prevent this position. He's too busy making generic developments, castling, etc. The position doesn't take that many moves to get to. It's subtle in that I don't force him to address anything right away, yet when I achieve my position black is often scratching his head wondering how he allowed me to develop such a strong attack.

In fact, I just got a compliment from a 1700 player who told me he had never been so thoroughly beaten. Of course, this opening is not infallible, but I am having success at about a 65%-35% ratio.

The problem is of course, if someone (such as yourself should we experiment) knows what is coming, they can build a defense to counter it. So the idea of this opening is the surprise element. If I try it against someone who has already played against it 1 or 2 times, things turn out differently than when we first played.

I am going to provide examples to you but I can't right now because I'm at work and I dare not access a gaming website from this computer. Then again, all you have to do is go to my profile on RHP and look at my public games. I've played this opening almost exclusively for the last several months.