Mainlines vs. Sidelines

Maybe this is crazy, but I’m not writing about the World Championship today. If you want to read about it, you can literally anywhere else that covers chess. Instead I’m going to talk about a debate that seems to be constantly simmering on chess Twitter and has flared up once again: mainlines vs. sidelines.

Neal Bruce @NealBruceBC

@Lona_Chess @chesscoachandra Nope. @chesscoachandra is wrong. You can get to 2200+ using the Alapin. Not every opening needs to be at 2700 strength. Shots fired 🔫🔥🔥

Meanwhile noted mainline supporter and London hater Andras Toth chimed in. And beloved coach Kostya Kavutskiy had a take as well. Broadly speaking, the battle lines seem to be drawn between coaches pushing for mainlines and many club players saying they need to go with sidelines to save time. Is there a right answer here?

Let’s start with this: every opening is fine. Within reason. Within reason means it doesn’t have a clear refutation leading to a loss or bad position. That means the Alapin is fine. The London is fine. Even 1. b3 is fine. All of these openings lead to more or less balanced and playable positions.

A not-fine opening would be something like the Duras Gambit, which goes 1. e4 f5. After taking the pawn, White will be not only a pawn up, but also have the superior position since Black’s king is exposed. Objectively, White has a winning position after two moves.

Given that there are so many good openings, I just don’t see any reason to take the risk of playing an opening that leads to a losing position if your opponent knows what they’re doing.

Once you’ve ruled out truly bad openings, you’re left with a choice between mainlines or sidelines. For example, when facing the Sicilian after 1. e4 c5, you could go for the Open Sicilian with 2. Nf3 followed by d4, when Black has many ways to respond leading to rich, well-explored positions; or you could go for the Alapin with 2. c3, after which Black’s options are more limited (although maybe not by as much as you think - more on that later).

So what are the selling points of mainlines and sidelines respectively?

Mainlines

• Objectively the best and most logical moves.

• You can study the games of grandmasters and world champions in your opening.

• You’ll never have to change your openings no matter how strong you get, unless you want to.

• You’ll be exposed to rich ideas, plans, and pawn structures.

Sidelines

• Surprise value. Your opponents might not be as well-prepared in these lines.

• Less to learn, perhaps freeing up time for studying other things like tactics or endgames.

Again, all openings are basically fine. If you’re building an opening repertoire from scratch and ask me for a recommendation, I’ll probably tell you to go with a mainline, but if you play the Alapin and you love it, don’t let me or anyone else tell you to stop. Many strategies can work in the opening.

But I do think some of the most common cases for sidelines are based on myths or misunderstandings. In particular, there seems to be an idea that playing a mainline is synonymous with memorizing loads of variations. This is combining two things that are really separate:

• The opening lines you play

• Your strategy for studying the opening

Which openings you play does not dictate how you have to study those openings. In the Sicilian, you can play 2. Nf3 because it’s the first move of “The Open Sicilian” and try to memorize a bunch of variations against all of Black’s replies. Or you can just play 2. Nf3 because it’s a good move that follows opening principles: increase control of the center, bring out the pieces, get closer to castling.

Let’s imagine an experiment. Say you decide upfront how much time you’ll spend on the opening. If you’re a beginning to intermediate player, this should probably not be a huge chunk of your overall time for chess. Whatever you decide, that’s locked in no matter which opening you choose. Now let’s say you’re deciding between the Alapin and Open Sicilian. Again, you’ll spend exactly the same amount of time preparing the opening no matter what you choose.

The perceived problem with choosing the Open Sicilian, at least as I understand it, is that you’d be entering an arms race you’re not equipped to win. That is, all of your opponents are diabolically well prepared in the Open Sicilian and you won’t make it through the opening alive. You’d be bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Respectfully, this is not what I see happening. There is a mythical game where your opponent is incredibly well prepared, plays the opening perfectly, knows all the middlegame plans, and crushes you without giving you a single chance. I have very rarely seen this game in the wild. Perhaps occasionally in GM games.

What I see, by and large, is most players making it up as they go along. In my tournament games, one or both players are usually out of their preparation quickly. When I walk around and look at games nearby, it’s mostly the same thing, one or both players improvising early on, very few games where both players are prepared and confident deep into the opening. And these are mostly games between experts and masters. When I look at games of students or lower-rated players, it’s the same thing except on average they’re out of their preparation earlier. I just don’t see that many players who are ferociously well-prepared who aren’t full-time chess professionals.

To be honest, I’m not that well prepared myself. I’m playing my first OTB tournament in months today. I decided what openings I would use earlier this week. I spend a decent chunk of time on chess as a default - blitz, lessons, rapid games, analyzing with friends - so I have some ideas, but I don’t have a properly worked out tournament repertoire.

And what even is theory, actually? It’s what in books and courses (but which ones?). It’s what happened in master games, and now computer games. Maybe most relevantly in 2021, it’s whatever is sitting in files on the computers of grandmasters and their trainers.

Seen this way, theory is an overwhelming beast no matter which opening you play. MVL’s depth of knowledge in the Najdorf would terrify you, but so would his knowledge in the Alapin! For a club player, if the goal is to play an opening at a 2700 level, I don’t think there’s a meaningful difference between mainlines and sidelines. Super GM preparation is out of reach either way. Fortunately, unless you’re a GM, you don’t have to play at a GM level. You just have to play your current opponents. And from what I’ve seen, most non-professionals are not that well prepared in mainlines or sidelines.

The relevant constraint isn’t the total amount of theory that exists about an opening. It’s hard to say what this even means, but no matter how you define theory you could certainly never learn all of it. The relevant constraints are:

• Your capacity to absorb opening information, which is the same regardless of which openings you play.

• Your opponents’ opening preparation, which you shouldn’t fear too much.

To put it another way, you will be building opening knowledge at whatever rate you can, based on your time allocation, study habits, and so on. You can either be building this knowledge in the Open Sicilian or Alapin. There is no magical level of knowledge at which you “know” an opening. In general, the more you know, the more you’ll realize you don’t know. What really counts is your ability to use your openings successfully in a practical game.

I have full confidence that club players can use mainlines successfully if they want to, which is why I was quite surprised to see the results of Neal’s opening survey. Nearly 80% of responders said that a 1200 player should favor “less theory heavy lines” over “most theory heavy lines.” What this says to me is that a lot of club players believe they can’t play mainlines.

Going back to the what vs. how distinction - what openings you play vs. how you study them - I suspect for many players the benefit of playing sidelines is that they inspire a more healthy way of approaching the opening, a better how. Maybe you feel more confident playing with logic, understanding, and improvisation in a sideline. The secret is that you can use this same approach in the mainlines. If you’ve made it this far, what I’d like you to take away is not that you have to play mainlines - every opening is fine - but that you can.