James Schuyler - Your Opponent is Overrated

Your Opponent is Overrated by James Schuyler. Un titre sans grand rapport avec le contenu… Comme souvent, c’est le sous-titre qui nous renseigne : c’est un “guide pratique pour provoquer des erreurs” – on ne précise pas chez qui… Blague à part, l’auteur nous livre ici son approche personnelle du jeu, entre ouvertures marginales (gambit letton…) et psychologie fine. Le livre pousse à s’interroger sur les différences entre les échecs au top niveau et le jeu des amateurs…
Schuyler covers all phases of the game and discusses other vital subjects such as harassment, material imbalance, time management, surprise moves, unusual ideas, provocative play, manoeuvres and recovering from bad positions.
Which opening does better in practice: the wild, “unsound” and “refuted” Latvian Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 f5) or the solid Philidor Defence (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d6)?
As James Schuyler points out, referring to the definitive Megabase, the Latvian Gambit scores higher.
How can such a discredited opening (and the same story is repeated with other “unsound” openings) do so well? The point is that playing like this throws the opponent off balance, makes them anxious and induces mistakes.
Even the very best players recognise the value of discomforting the opponent. Historically, Emanuel Lasker was the master of this approach and his modern day equivalent is world champion Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen frequently employs offbeat openings and his opponents invariably fail to counter them correctly.
This is the key theme of this book. Schuyler covers all phases of the game and discusses other vital subjects such as harassment, material imbalance, time management, surprise moves, unusual ideas, provocative play, manoeuvres and recovering from bad positions.