Difficult decisions

When playing chess I often find myself losing myself in the jungle of variations. According to John Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess, I should probably think less and move faster:

"When analysing a given position, it is fair to say that one almost always sees more in the first five minutes than in the next five minutes. The five minutes after that is even less productive and so on."

Nunn claims that "if a player spends more than 20 minutes over a move, the result is almost always a mistake." In his opinion, it is better to follow one's instinction or even just choose at random a move out of two equal possibilies than to analyse for too long.

A possible solution

When I was teenager, I used to play exclusively e4 when playing the white pieces. With black I played the Sicilian dragon, closed Ruy Lopez and King's Indian - rarely anything else.

During the last years I have played almost exclusively Sicilian Najdorf and Stonewall Dutch. It seems I have to adjust my opening repertoire to my tactical abilities, thus I think I should not continue trying my luck with Najdorf. I just dont have time to study the Sicilian Defense. The French might be a solution for me. So far I have played the French only once in a tournament game.

I suppose I should adjust also my white openings to this repertoire: in future I will play Nf3 followed by c4 and/or g3. Réti and English opening should be my main weapons in the future.

First post

This blog is meant to record my journey towards a higher rating in chess. I used to be a promising young player when I was around 13 years old. At the moment my national rating is aroung 1750 ELO, nothing to be proud of, and at the age of 37 years I’m neither young nor promising anymore.

My chess is full of strategic mistakes, missed opportunities and weak moves and my opening repertoire is changing constantly. I know I should concentrate on something and maybe even study some of the dozens of the books I have bought during the last decade or so.

And I should finally decide if I open with c4, d4 or e4!