Studying chess in Miami

I have not posted on my blog for a while, I was on vacation in Miami, and had little time for writing new entries.

I’ve however been studying chess quite actively while on the trip, mostly going through my opening repertoire. Khalifman’s book on the Spanish opening has been of enormous help. Not to beat this subject to death, but wanted to comment that I realize now more and more that putting together a foolproof set of responses against every possible move an opponent can throw at you is quite a hustle. But then again, it’s something you inevitably must do, sooner or later, and once you have such a repertoire in a database, you can print it to study more conveniently, and preparing for each game is way easier. I also found a related series of blog posts - http://www.chessedelic.com/2009/04/25/how-to-build-a-chess-opening-repertoire-part-i-getting-the-lay-of-the-land/ that are a lot more detailed than anything I wrote on the subject so far.