Polishing an opening repertoire is essential for top chess players, who must have variations prepared to meet all the standard openings. Those may be selected on grounds of stylistic appeal or rarity, hoping to catch an opponent off-guard. There are standard responses in turn, and a well-prepared player will have counter-ideas locked and loaded. Vast trees of chess analysis are stored in databases on their laptops and swapped over the internet. If you have money, you can buy books or online courses in which grandmasters share their ideas. If you have time, you can turn on a powerful chess engine (such as Stockfish) and craft your own.
The problem is that putting it on your computer is not the same as putting it between your ears. Chess players are like children at a buffet: we see all that mouth-watering knowledge and pile it high, only to find that such heaps of data can never be digested.
Recalling half of a variation is more dangerous than knowing nothing at all. If you forget some nuance in a complex situation, or muddle it with a subtly different position, the consequences can be calamitous.
In my experience, mnemonic tricks are of little use. The facts one wants to remember are abstract and complex, and an active player’s repertoire is constantly changing, like the proverbial Ship of Theseus. There is no substitute for understanding each move and rehearsing it often. Alas, there are few economies of scale in this process, because even superficially similar positions can demand a different move.
Most memory lapses happen deep into a variation, but I have also known them to come disconcertingly early. More than once, I have followed an opening line which had already occurred several times in my own games, only for my mind to draw a blank.
When it happens, some players sink into thought, striving to piece together the fragments that remain in their memory. Others resort to bluster, responding quickly even when their knowledge has dried up. Risky as that is, it can succeed in unsettling an opponent who is wrestling with doubts about their own memory.
A mysterious case arose at the Sinquefield Cup, held last month in St Louis. Nepomniachtchi was almost certainly surprised by Caruana’s choice of the Dragon variation of the Sicilian, and a rare sideline with 9…Qa5. But he responded quickly with an even rarer idea (10 Qd3). ‘Nepo’ continued to play fast, and Caruana guessed that he had accidentally walked into a line which the Russian had prepared for the Candidates tournament (in April 2024).
But Nepo’s 18 g5? was a careless and disastrous error. He played it almost instantly, so I imagine that he mistakenly recalled the idea from a slightly different position. Caruana’s response, 18…Nxe4!!, was impressive, but a standard motif for this opening, and it was all over a few moves later.
Ian Nepomniachtchi-Fabiano Caruana
Sinquefield Cup, August 2024
1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 g6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Bg7 5 Nc3 Nc6 6 Be3 Nf6 7 Bc4 O-O 8 Bb3 d6 9 f3 Qa5 10 Qd3 Ne5 11 Qd2 Bd7 12 O-O-O Rfc8 13 Kb1 Nc4 14 Bxc4 Rxc4 15 g4 Be6 16 Nb3 Qa6 17 Bd4 Rac8 18 g5? (see diag) Nxe4!! 19 fxe4 19 Nxe4 Rxd4! 20 Nxd4 Qxa2+ 21 Kc1 Qa1 mate. Bxd4 20 Nxd4 Rxc3 21 a3 21 bxc3 Qxa2+ and mate follows, or 21 Nxe6 Rxc2 22 Qd5 Qb6! 23 b3 Qf2 wins easily Qc4 22 b3 Qc5 23 Rc1 23 Kb2 is hopeless: Bxb3! 24 cxb3 e5 etc. Qxa3 24 h4 R8c5 25 Rcf1 Bxb3 White resigns
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