Tuesday February 1, 7pm CT
Lecture 1 - It Doesn’t Matter What Kind Of Player You Are: Making decisions based on the pawn center, not your preferences or prejudices
In this lecture, we will throw any preconceptions about which openings are boring/exciting or tactical/positional into the trash. We will learn how to evaluate plans to maintain/gain the initiative based on whether the pawn center is closed vs open and dynamic vs static, and how to make decisions about which openings favor what types of pawn centers.
Thursday February 3, 7pm CT
Lecture 2 - It Doesn’t Matter What You’re “Supposed” To Play: Learning how to improvise and make spontaneous decisions when out of book
A major part of learning any opening is learning when to sacrifice material for the initiative or, on the flip side, when to prophylactically stop your opponent from doing the same. We will develop general principles for what features of various opening positions determine whether the game will call for more ambitious or cautious play, even if we forgot (I.e. never learned) what we were supposed to do in this exact position.
Saturday February 5 (time TBA)
Training Games From Mystery Positions
To apply what we’ve learned (namely: that it doesn’t matter what opening you play), we will play some training games from mystery opening positions of my choosing. Practice improvising in the space of the unfamiliar. JJ will stream commentary of these games live on Twitch with special guest commentators, too. The top-scoring student and the student with the most creative game will each win a private lesson with JJ.
Tuesday February 8, 7pm CT
Lecture 3 - It Doesn’t Matter How Many Variations You’ve Memorized: how to be efficient students of the opening
For these last two lectures, we will switch gears from theoretical to practical questions. No amount of general theoretical knowledge will compensate for a complete lack of concrete opening preparation, so we must learn how to ‘skim’ dense courses, books, and game collections to figure out which variations we actually need to memorize, and which are just listed to illustrate themes or motifs
Thursday February 10, 7pm CT
Lecture 4 - Studying The Opening Actually Matters, Though: reflections on how to ensure your ‘opening study time’ actually improves your overall chess understanding
Gerzadowicz’s famous quote about the lack of value in opening study warns us that studying the opening risks not teaching us anything beyond whatever variation is in front of us. But this needn’t be the case! In this final lecture, we will focus on how to learn general lessons about every facet of the game, from coordination to endgame evaluation, from existing opening resources, as long as you know how to look for them.
Saturday February 12, Time TBA
Rapid Tournament
We will celebrate a successful end to camp with an informal rapid tournament. This time, you can even play your own moves from the start! JJ will again stream commentary of these games live on Twitch with special guest commentators. The top-scoring student and the student with the most creative game will also win a private lesson.