"...in all its simplistic fury..."

Beloved chess writer Jeremy Silman once said that the only answer to the question "Why Should I Play Chess" is, "in all its simplistic fury," if you love playing chess.

When do I not enjoy playing the game, then?

Answer: whenever I get into positions in which 1) I have no idea how I got there, 2) I have no idea what to do, 3) I lose horribly, in a style reminiscent of one of the Saw murders.

Let me give you an example, with me using the Black pieces. After the moves 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.d4 Nxd5 4.c4 Nb6 5.Nf3 g3 6.h3 Bg7 7.Nc3 Nc6 8.Be3 0-0 9.Qd2 e5 10.d5 Na5, in some order, we reach the following position:



"The books" say equal, though Fritz prefers White, and with good reason. Black's awkward a5-knight, which White will threaten to trap with b4 at some point, and his hard-to-develop light-squared bishop will soon become great headaches. Further, White has that solid d5 pawn and threats of playing *either* knight to b5-c7.

Frequently I have seen the sequence 11.Bxb6! axb6 12.Rd1. Fritz rates this as better for Black, due to White's uncastled king and Black's influence in the center and threats of f5 and e4. However, I have gotten into many an awkward situation here. Although the position is playable (and even good) if you can figure out the common pitfalls for Black, I'm not going to bother analyzing it any more now that I know that White's best plan actually involves not taking the knight but playing Bh6 and castling queenside.

Backtracking a bit, I think Black's best try is the tricky theoretical Portuguese Variation, namely 3. d4 Bg4!? 4. f3 Bf5, maintaining his "gambit status" with an opening scheme full of tricks and potential king attacks. Of course, as I have ranted elsewhere, these kinds of openings are going out of my repertoire. It is important that I study this opening at some point in the future, as I will likely encounter it otb, but I don't think I'll use it in any serious games.

Anyway, what I need to change about my personality is my tendency to get depressed when I get into confusing situations in which every seemingly-useless move I make torture. The solution, I believe, is a kind of "chess realism", in which I am not afraid to change my openings or even opening styles when I seem to be finding objective evidence (whatever that is) that my favorite ideas really don't hold up.

(I've had to do this before, when I insisted that the Fried Liver Attack and its cousin the Lolli were easy wins for Black. I learned my lesson there alright.)