I think I've had somewhat of a similar history with the Najdorf (and changing Sicilian lines), actually. I also read the Vigorito book and must've played about 200-300 games with that repertoire online.
I can't quite remember why I dropped it to be honest, but I don't think it's as difficult to learn as some people make it out to be.
There can be many temptations to dabbling in more than one opening (Sicilian) at one time! Curious how you can't remember why you dropped something like the Najdorf after playing so many games with it.
Definitely—I used to be scared of 'main lines' as I had the idea that you have to 'learn' a lot of concrete variations, and sure, with lines like the Poisoned Pawn you might need that, but I learnt that as a starting point any opening is actually not that difficult if you focus on understanding what it aims for from the opening to middlegame phase. You could say that with main lines, the more you stick with it and go deeper, the more you can gain from it because there are whole worlds within them.
I think I've had somewhat of a similar history with the Najdorf (and changing Sicilian lines), actually. I also read the Vigorito book and must've played about 200-300 games with that repertoire online.
I can't quite remember why I dropped it to be honest, but I don't think it's as difficult to learn as some people make it out to be.
There can be many temptations to dabbling in more than one opening (Sicilian) at one time! Curious how you can't remember why you dropped something like the Najdorf after playing so many games with it.
Definitely—I used to be scared of 'main lines' as I had the idea that you have to 'learn' a lot of concrete variations, and sure, with lines like the Poisoned Pawn you might need that, but I learnt that as a starting point any opening is actually not that difficult if you focus on understanding what it aims for from the opening to middlegame phase. You could say that with main lines, the more you stick with it and go deeper, the more you can gain from it because there are whole worlds within them.