Out of my last four Sicilian defenses against strong competition, I have lost two and was worse out of the opening in the other two. The Catlin-Brumley match on May 15 worried me, but when Ian Edgerle took me to task this past Thursday I got really motivated. As soon as I got home I watched two IM David Vigorito lectures on the Alapin Sicilian, recorded all his lines and put them into ChessBase.
Losing is not entirely bad... If Ian had let me escape that game with a draw or win, I might have enjoyed a complacent Memorial Day weekend. As it turned out however, I couldn't stop thinking about how to respond to 1.e4 - at one low point, I even began to believe Fischer's attachment of an exclamation mark (1.e4!) was correct.
Since all indicators seemed to point to poor opening knowledge, I spent much of Saturday thinking about how to develop an opening repertoire - and if I should keep the Sicilian. After all, it takes a lot of time and work to develop an opening repertoire and now would be the best time to drop an opening, before lots of work goes into understanding a particular opening. By the end of the day I felt comfortable staying with 1... c5. I even began an opening repertoire database with lines and commentary.
After I decided my game was most in need of opening preparation, I started working. As part of my "education" I watched a FritzTrainer video on the Nimzo-Indian by GM Jacob Aagaard. A few minutes into the sixth lecture he said a very interesting thing. He mentioned that most GMs don't know nearly as much theory as people assume they do. Hmm... Then earlier today I was perusing ChessLecture.com's Step-by-Step Training Guide when I noticed under the 2200-2400 section (not the 2000-2200) they recommend opening study, while much of the material throughout their Training Guide is directed toward endgame study.
I really didn't need any more confusion or conflicting advice, but there it was. So here I sit, back at the drawing board as it were, searching for the way, a way that fits me, to improve my chess ability. And I thought it was only a Sicilian crisis.