How to Prepare for an Opponent | Chess Meditations

Preparation is the key to success in chess! I have shared my strategies for preparing against specific opponents and finding weaknesses in their play.

The first thing you will want to do is find as many of your opponent’s games as possible. I use several resources. Here they are: chessDB, chessbase, lichess, Fide, chesscom, chessbomb, chesstempo.

There are more, but these are usually going to be enough. For the first stage of your preparation, you should analyze every single one of your opponent’s games with the color you are preparing against. Don’t forget to include blitz games (which people often do), as they can provide valuable information and you can usually find plenty of them. Another thing is that people often play same openings in both standard and blitz.

In your analysis, you will want to learn about your opponent. You will want to find out things about him/her, which could give you an advantage. Things such as:

Is my opponent young or old? Younger players tend to be more tactical, so you might want to avoid sharp positions against them, whereas older people tend to lose concentration during longer games, so a slow position might be the perfect choice against them.

Is my opponent aggressive or not?

Does my opponent play the endgame well?

Does my opponent follow the main lines, or does he usually deviate early (meaning that he doesn’t know theory too well)?

Does my opponent know how to maneuver his pieces?

Does he understand square weaknesses?

Does he play better with the knights or with the bishops?

All of these questions, and many more, when answered, could help you reach a decision of about what sort of approach you will want to take in your game.

The next thing you will want to do is find his weaknesses. Analyze all the games and list all the mistakes you can find! Find out which types of mistakes he does most often and try to use that!

I always try to find five surprising moves in the first 20 moves of the game. This gives me plenty of hidden weapons in my repertoire which I can often use in play. They don’t have to be the computer moves. It’s enough that they are tricky and hard to solve. They might just make your opponent blunder or waste precious clock time:)

#chess

[mikaelballack]

Bravo Stjepan for your videos i wish you become a master of chess in the future!Greetings from Greece!

[claywilliams]

thank you for being the least obnoxious and most straight-to-the-point chess channel out there.

[ryaghnaramansanthosh]

Hi mate, the tiltle could have been Stjepan Vs. Stjepan😉😉... confusing the audience.

[saubhagyasingh]

Well. Looking for his opponents who are your friends and asking them about his play and opening is a way u could prepare.

[davidwestwood]

Know your repertoire! Know the counter attacks. Know your opponent. Use the web.

[NetzKaiser]

Oh, I am sorry, but in the past I often said: "Caro-Kann can't anything." But I think it is because I don't know real Caro-Kann players who know why they play it. BTW: I found your channel and love it five minutes later. That was three days ago.

[OswinOsgood]

*"Know your enemy"*
- Green Day

[barryphillips]

There is no way you can prepare for an opponent in typical 5 round swiss tournaments. First of all you wont know who your opponent is until just before the tournament starts. Second, your opponents wont nec have their past games listed anywhere.

[RonakBadhe]

I don't mean to come off as racist but when I search up the names of my opponents who have a family in a certain country, there are many people with the same name. What should I do about that?