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).
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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.
