10 Tips for Preparing for Your Next Opponent in Chess
Prepare smarter, not harder
There are many approaches to preparing for your next chess game.
Here are ten tips I’ve learnt the hard way.
1. Put your own chess before your opponent’s
Players often make the mistake of focusing their preparation fully on the opponent, completely omitting their own chess personality and preferences. They try to find an opening that would take their opponent unawares and forget to consider if it suits them.
—GM Jan Markos, The Secret Ingredient
Whether you’re playing a sharp line or you just want a playable middlegame, you want the kind of game or position you’re comfortable with, and at least some idea of how to play even after your ‘prep’ has finished.
Even if you find a line your opponent plays that you might be able to exploit, think twice about playing something you have no idea about just to get there. They might deviate earlier, leaving you feeling very, very stupid.
2. Finding their online games isn’t all good
OpeningTree is a reliable tool to look at your opponent’s online games. A bit of Googling (‘lichess/chess.com + full name’) tends to find an account for many players.
Having more information on their games is helpful. However, it can mean more things to check, and if they play a lot of different openings online, you might feel like you have to check every single variation.
Focus on their
recent games, and
longer time control games.
It’s more likely they’ve played something there they want to use in the tournament.
3. Don’t be too predictable
Before a tournament, it can be useful to prepare against yourself as you would for an opponent. What would an opponent see? What will they think you will play?
If you repeat the same line in every game, you’ll be easy to prepare against. Having mix-up options is useful, ranging from different openings to different options within the same variation. Train with these before the tournament so you have at least two options you’re confident with.
4. Don’t prepare up until the last minute
The advantage gained in preparation needs to be bigger than the energy invested in preparing for the game. You have to find an effective balance.
—GM David Navara, The Secret Ingredient
You might think squeezing out value from every minute before the game is best, especially with tournaments where there are multiple rounds in a day. However, preparing until just before the game leaves you with no time to relax and recharge.
You might be lucky and your last-minute work might pay off, but in the long run, I think it’s better to have a routine of resting your brain for a while before each game rather than stressing it out before the real battle.
Chat with some friends, zone out like a potato or take a walk outside.
5. Don’t assume what your opponent will play
As a friend of mine once said with confidence, ‘when you assume something, you make an ass out of me and u.’ When you’re sure what opening will appear on the board, it’s easy to invest too much time and energy preparing for it. If it works out, great, but it’s more likely than not that they won’t fall into your exact preparation. Most players know the dangers of being too predictable.
It’s healthier to go into the game not expecting to guess the battlefield right—if you’re on the mark, it’s your lucky day, if you weren’t, it’s a game of chess as always.
6. Check their games for both colours
Never, ever forget to check whether your opponent, by any chance, likes to play the exact line you prepared for him with opposite colours.
—GM Jan Markos, The Secret Ingredient
Don’t only focus on the colour your opponent will be playing. Check what they play as the other colour, as it gives you an idea of what they might know well or are not as comfortable with. Seeing what they play with each colour can also give you more information about what kind of player they are.
7. Study their games beyond the opening
Most people think of prep as looking at what openings the opponent plays, but there are many other pieces of information that can come in handy.
How often they do play in tournaments?
How have they performed in the last year or two?
How do they tend to play against opponents around your rating?
How do they tend to win/lose against higher/equal/lower-rated players?
What have strong players decided to play against them?
Do they seem to play into certain types of middlegames?
Do they tend to prefer quite, technical games or dynamic ones?
Do they often blunder in the late middlegame (could be time pressure)?
Do they perform well or badly in games where the endgame is reached?
8. Surprises are double-edged swords
The truly strong players know their favourite openings thoroughly and will have several escape routes prepared in them. They can sense what you’re up to and slip out of the trap before it snaps. When a grandmaster or international master escapes from your trap, it will often leave you adrift in unknown waters. Your opponent might not know them either—but he still likely knows more than you do.
—GM Jan Markos, The Secret Ingredient
As with #1, remember that going for a surprise can also open you to surprises earlier in the line if you’re playing something you usually don’t. Don’t avoid trying new things or approaches, though—trial and error and the experience leave you wiser.
9. Don’t leave opening study for during tournaments
You might be someone who doesn’t like openings, so working on your lines before your games in a tournament is where you actually learn the most. While it might be a good thing that you don’t spend a lot of your time on openings between tournaments, it’s good to at least know your main options well, through
practicing them in games
reviewing the games afterwards so you know what to do next time
studying and compiling model games that you can always come back to.
Do the work before the tournament so you won’t have to work so intensely before each game.
With the work you do during the tournament, always save it and put it in your files—like cramming for an exam, you’ll forget most of it the next day.
10. Don’t overestimate the importance of prep
Yes, it’s good to know how to prepare well. But preparing for as long as possible, or as well as possible, don’t necessarily maximise your results in the game.
Our opponent might surprise us. We might forget our prep. We might mix up our lines. We might be tired after the previous round.
In the vast majority of games, you’ll be playing an unfamiliar position in the opening stage or early middlegame no matter how well you prepare. Don’t overdo it.
Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middle game. To all players I can recommend the following: simplicity and economy. These are the characteristics of the opening systems of many great masters. They do not strain unduly for advantages in the opening; they would just as soon move on to the next stage of the game, hoping their skill will overcome the opponent in the middle game or endgame.
—GM Lajos Portisch, quoted in How To Study Chess On Your Own (GM Davorin Kuljasevic)
Other posts relating to preparing for a game
How To Prepare Against An Opponent In Chess (GM Noël Studer on Next Level Chess)
The Right Way to Prepare for a Chess Game (GM Hrant Melkumyan on ChessMood)
I have definitely made mistake no. 1 several times!
Was a criminal offender of #4 in my mid-to-late teens. Took many games to realize I would've been fresher and less nervous at the board had I kept prep to a minimum.