A short passage from the introduction of Common positional play 9:
And now: openings! Who could have imagined? Not me. I have always found openings to be a very difficult topic. Because it's so vast. Because it's so challenging to know exactly how to approach it. Because it requires knowledge, or at least self-awareness. Because it's also difficult to get your preparation on the board. As a player, I find it challenging, but also as a trainer, coach, and technical director of the KNDB. Before you know it, you can spend days on it and end up with nothing to show on the board. Disappointment ensues. Couldn’t I have done something better with all that time?
In all my training sessions, openings therefore play a subordinate role: I prefer to invest all that precious time in the middle game and everything that comes with it. In other words: openings are quite tricky. But of course, I have dealt with openings throughout my career. Always searching for what works and what doesn’t. Always looking for how to record it in a workable and practical manner. It won’t come as a surprise that this part of the series is largely based on all my own very diverse experiences with openings. In this section, the reader will see different approaches to studying openings. Sometimes small and manageable. Sometimes deep and complicated. Sometimes just a handful of moves and sometimes even entire games. The goal is always for it to be practical, workable, and playable. The aim is also to think about why you do something in the opening and against whom it works or doesn’t work. My experience is that this psychological aspect is often overlooked: what suits you and what suits your opponent and why an opening suits you or doesn’t.
