Reti or not

I recently purchased Starting Out: The Reti, by GM Neil McDonald. I enjoyed some of his other books, Starting out: 1. e4 and How to Play against 1. e4. The latter having a nice section on the Fort Knox and an explanation by the author that being a “lazy” player it was the perfect shortcut in learning to play the French while working his way up as a junior. I can relate to that, except for the part about working my way up.

I do not think I have found an opening to cure my ills, but I am going to try to give it a fair shot. The benefits of the Reti to me are:

• Black is not likely to have prepared for it. When I study as Black I worry about 1. e4 and 1. d4. Anything else I just deal with as it comes.
• Although it is not common, it is solid. It’s not like I’m trying on the Wing gambit in the Sicilian just to get the game into uncharted waters.
• It bypasses all the defenses to e4 that give me fits.

A quick read-through of the book brings up a likely negative:

• There are a lot of ways for Black to meet this; dxc4 introduces a much different game than playing symmetrically.

And that means I will have to put in some work. In the dxc4 lines (either right away or delayed a bit), White is giving up a pawn, and it’s important to know how to respond to either get it back or retain compensation.

Tonight the club is having a blitz tournament. It’s too soon to trot out the Reti, and probably not a good choice for that kind of play anyway. I’ll stick to 1. e4 and maybe throw in some interesting gambits, like the Belgrade. It’s just for fun. Well, for fun and Quick rating points, but they don’t really count anyway.