Vienna Game

>>53491471
There's nothing we could tell you about chess that isn't already written down in some book for you to memorize.

>>53491471
Not much, I'm afraid. It's a pretty uncommon opening, and I'm more of a d4 guy myself. On the rare occasion I do play e4, I think that Nf3 is enormously stronger.

>>53491478
It does continue to perplex me how people who have absolutely nothing useful to contribute to a thread feel the need to post in it anyway. I'm not interested in Yu-Gi-Oh, hence I do not make it a habit of posting in Yu-Gi-Oh threads.

The Vienna Game was mostly popular in the 19th century and unfortunately there isn't much up-to-date theory about it or recent examples of this opening in IM/GM play. It doesn't harm anything, but it also doesn't accomplish anything either since Nc3 doesn't threaten something like Nf3 does.

It's hardly a bad opening of course and good for a surprise/change from the usual boring shit like Ruy Lopez, plus your opponent probably won't be prepared for it.

>>53491595
I myself prefer e4 openings though some d4 ones like Queen's Gambit Declined and Nimzo-Indian are ok.

>>53492115
e4 openings are the best in avoiding draws

>>53492115
Not the Sicilian Defense though, fuck that shit. I love when I open with 1. e4 and the dipstick across from me does c5.

>>53492051
The Vienna often just transposes into the Four Knights Game. Black can always just play 2...d3 or 2...Bc5 if he wants to avoid that.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1228813

Fun little Vienna miniature.

>>53492127
At master level play, e4 and d4 have the same win rate as white; d4 does get more draws, but it does so by taking away black wins, not white wins.

Most GMs only try to go for a draw when playing Black since conventional wisdom is that White always has an inherent advantage with having the first move.

>>53493756
Turqoise bicycle shoe fins actualize radishes greenly.

>When asked if Viktor Korchnoi deserved to be world champion, Boris Spassky replied "No. Absolutely not. He had no style of his own."

>>53497373
I met Korchnoi at a NYC chess club in the early 2000s. I respect him as a player, but he was a dick and he only got worse with age. He accused me of being a KGB spy, this being over a decade since the USSR ceased to exist.

There's a lot of stories about him throwing the pieces down and ranting in disgust when some some young player beat him--it was clear that this was more than his ego could stand. I gotta give him credit for sheer durability--his FIDE rating was over 2600 well into his 70s.

File: korchnoi07.jpg (54KB, 550x367px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 550x367px

>>53497489
You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone over 70 who retained their chess skills as well as Korch did. A lot of guys were still very strong in their 50s like Botvinnik and Alekhine, and Fischer was rated over 2600 when he had the rematch with Spassky in the early 90s. Also Lasker won the 1937 Leningrad tournament at 67, but for being over 70...Korchnoi had to be one for the record books.

>>53491653
Quit your bitching.

>>53497721
Lasker did win a major tournament at 67, that is true, though he retired afterwards and didn't play seriously in his 70s, but then he also lived back when medical treatment was very limited compared to today. Capablanca went at only 53 from lethally high blood pressure, a condition that is easily treated nowadays. Smyslov and Reshevsky were still actively playing in their 70s but I don't think they were as good as Korchnoi.

Also Fischer was just shy of 50 when he played that rematch with Spassky. Actually his performance there was remarkable not so much for his age (49 is a long way from geezerdom) but because he hadn't done any serious chess events for 20 years.

>>53497938
Reshevsky didn't play as much as Korchnoi in his later years but he did tie for third place in the US closed championship in the early 80s when he was about 70. That was a strong tournament with a lot of good players in it, Seriwan, Benko, Browne, a couple Soviet emigres, etc.

>>53497489
Why do you lie? I told this story a couple of threads back, and I can remember that it was the Manhattan Chess Club, not just an "NYC" chess club, and that it was 2002.

>>53497938
It's not quite a fair comparison because Korchnoi played all the time and remained very active until almost the end of his life. Lasker didn't play nearly as many events. Actually it's almost unfair in a way how he could take breaks from chess for literally years, then come back and win big events. Then again, the overall competition Lasker faced was stronger than the players that Korchnoi faced. Going by the FIDE rating system, Lasker was #1 from the 1890s through the 1920s, a period spanning about 35 years, and he was world champion for 27 of them. For comparison, Korchnoi made #1 for a mere four months in his whole 60+ year career.

>>53498358
Lasker had a full-time career as a mathematics professor--he seems to have gone back into chess whenever he got bored or wanted money. For example, he announced his retirement from chess after finally losing the title to Capablanca in 1921, then came back just two years later apparently because hyperinflation in Germany blew out his life savings.

If you go by FIDE ratings, the four best 70+ year olds in history were Reshevsky, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and Najdorf.

Blackburne was also quite formidable into his old age. He beat a 27 year old Nimzowich when he was 72 at the St. Petersburg 1914 tournament, and he was doing blindfold sims well into his 70s.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1604728

Beat a 17 year old Caruana at 80. This is definitely one for the record books.

Korchnoi always played Fischer extremely well, one reason being his French Defense fetish (Fischer as White always struggled with the French Defense). The other factor being that Korchnoi simply wasn't afraid of Fischer at all unlike many players.

>>53497880
Quit life my dude