Sunday, April 23, 2023

LCCC Still Going Strong on Mondays! The US Open and the Reti Opening

 
The Livingston County Chess Club meets every Monday night between 4pm and 10pm at the Buffalo Wild Wings in the Green Oak Mall in Brighton, MI. 

Stop on by for some friendly chess, good food and 'refreshments'. Everyone of all ages and playing strength are welcome to attend. And free lessons to all beginners!

We will be having our Fischer Random 960 Tournament soon. It’s free to enter. Be sure to do that!

Speaking of tournaments, the 2023 US Open will be played in Grand Rapids, Michigan from July 29 until August 6th. Your humble scribe plans on playing in it. I played in the 2013 US Open in Madison, Wisconsin and it is an environment like no other to get your chess fix. The main tournament plays in the evening with side events happening every day. You can literally play chess all day long if desired (Hint to enjoy playing in the main tournament: embrace your chess ego getting crushed).

Anyway, while going over possible openings to add to my “repertoire” for this event, I stumbled upon this one: The Reti Opening/Gambit. And I found it going over the chess games of the Grand Master Richard Reti.

Here are the moves for White:

     1.    Nf3                d4

     2.    c4

Sort of an English Opening but preventing Black from playing 1. …..e5 after White’s 1. c4, which is the standard first move in the English Opening.

It is not played as a gambit as Black can take the pawn safely as long as he doesn’t try to hold the extra pawn. The trouble is not in taking it, but in trying to keep the pawn advantage. And not taking, also gives Black multiple safe options. And White has multiple options himself.

This is exactly why I will not be attempting to learn this opening to use for the US Opening. Trying to remember responses to so many possible responses from Black, make it a time-consuming opening venture.

Would I play it at the club in a casual game? Sure. I will just wing it from there to see what happens. It’s a casual/fun game.

In this game collection book on Richard Reti, they gave a brief history of this opening that I thought I would share.

The opening was first played in the Game Reti-Grunfeld (who also has a Black defense named after him) on April 4th, 1923. The inaugural attempt was not good as Reti lost in 36 moves, but not due to his new opening. He played his new opening in three games in that tournament (1-1-1), but it was not copied by other players in later tournaments right after the debut.

Annotators had no idea what to call it since it was not fashionable to name openings after players who were still living. So it was filed under “Irregular Openings”.

Some tried to call it the Zukertort Opening, but they had confused it with 1. Nf3, 2. e3 White opening that is the Zukertort Opening. Some tried to christen it the Napoleon Opening as 1. Nf3 2. c4 was supposedly played by the emperor in 1804 against Madame de Remusat. But it was proven that these games were ‘composed’ by someone after Napoleon’s death.

Analysts also claimed that this strange new opening would die a natural death. Teichmann, who invented the idea of “double fianchetto” of bishops, called it a “stupid double holed variation.”

Eventually, Reti began to have success after success with his opening in later tournaments and other grandmasters began to take it up. The central idea is to have Black commit his center pawns to advanced positions where White could attack them.

A slow start by the grandmasters of chess to this opening idea at the beginning, but it is still played at the highest level of chess to this day.

Unfortunately, since this opening has enough branches of ideas for both White and Black to employ as grandmasters, means that leaves too much theory for me to be able to digest.