Repertoire: Main Lines vs Side lines

One advice every strong player seems to give to aspiring ones is to play main lines, because they will need them when facing stronger oposition in the future.

But... we have Mark Hebden, who won a lot of tournaments and mantained a high rating despite being almost 60 years old, playing mostly side lines as white.

Even Hebden says to his students to not follow his way and play main lines instead, but his results speaks for themselves.

What do you think ?

It's just a tradeoff. I read that (I believe) Morphy and others often played less frequent lines to take their opponents out of book early, which is an advantage for the player who knows the uncommon line and steers the game that way. On the other hand, *if* your opponent happens to know that opening well, he is likely able to equalize easily or get some advantage from the lesser line because it's a weaker line. It's just a gamble on which player knows more.

I understand, but is it a good strategy to a chess career in general ?

I'm 100% for mainlines.  The goal is to learn the mainlines(or at least the positional/tactical themes), then find your own deviations where you can utilize the objective advantage of theory while taking your opponent into territory that you understand more.  It really isnt THAT much work to prepare novelties with an engine before a tournament, people act like you have to study chess 12 hours a day to do stuff like that.  Not true.  

"... simplicity and economy ... are the characteristics of the opening systems of many great masters. They do not strain unduly for advantages in the opening; they would just as soon move on to the next phase of the game, hoping their skill will overcome the opponent in the middlegame or endgame. ... the most complicated variations demand huge amounts of time for home analysis, time available only to professional chess players. ... I will discuss here only openings and defenses that in my opinion offer simplicity and economy. ... The Dragon and Najdorf Variations ... have been analyzed to twenty moves and more; if a player without adequate preparation walks into an analyzed sequence he may lose even to a weaker opponent. Under no circumstances should you handle these variations in serious games unless you are a professional chess player with unlimited time for study. ... [After 1 e4 c5,] I suggest that you consider ...: the wing gambits with [b4] (but of course not everyone likes to sacrifice a pawn); or [c3] followed by [d4]; or variations with [Bb5] ([2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5], or [2 Nf3 d6 3 Bb5+]); or systems with [g3] ([2 Nf3 e6 3 d3 d5 4 Nbd2] followed by [g3]) with transposition to the King's Indian Attack. Among the systems in which [g3] is played, best known is the Closed Sicilian ([2 Nc3] and [3 g3]), ... " - GM Lajos Portisch (1974)

"... we can see from the above that players who are happy as White to play for a small edge in a queenless middlegame have a number of lines where they can achieve the sort of position they want. Even in other variations, the willingness to settle for a near-equal endgame, rather than trying to obtain an objective opening advantage, makes one's whole job of opening repertoire management very much easier. ... With his superb intuition and depth of positional understanding, [Petrosian] was accustomed to treating the opening relatively flippantly, and did not normally strive very hard to gain a theoretical advantage. ... it seems to me that for many players below master level, having a repertoire where there is minimal need to prepare could in fact be quite attractive. It must be remembered that, despite its shortcomings, Petrosian's approach proved good enough to wrest the world title out of the hands of Botvinnik, one of the best-prepared players ever. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2003)

Looks really apealling, it makes sense.

Hebden is a GM who knows when its ok to break rules and when it isn't. He can play whatever he wants with full understanding of what he's doing. Amateur players just don't have that kind of mastery of the game. But even Kasparov and other young Russian players played the Torre/London when they were juniors.

Thanks for this clarification

Musnt forget that Hebden has played mainstreams frequently as black - e5 with Martial in the Ruy and the King's Indian, so he isnt playing just side lines . Secondly, if he hadnt played the side lines could he have become an even stronger player?

It's probably fine for aspiring players to use sidelines some of the time, but would probably benefit more by playing the main lines mostly (Michael Adam i think said that once he reached the top tier he realised how much he had lost out by not playing main line sicilians. ) 

Mainlines expose you to a wider range of structures that can sometimes help in different openings, but also it is more interesting to study top level games involving openings that you play - and these are usually easier to find involving main line openings.

I think mainlines also are less likely to get busted and can provide you with more options. It can also be argued that sidelines often have a lot of theory, perhaps not as much as some mainlines, but less room for making a mistake and so more important to learn.

That what I was thinking !

Maybe Hebden could have been stronger if he played main lines as white too.

I think I'm going to stick with the main lines and not follow hebden repertoire as white as I planned.

In the introduction to starting out 1.d4 John Cox who recommends main lines states players like morozevich and hodgson achieved what they have despite their devotion to the bizarre,not because of it.

And mainline players achieve their success because of their devotion to mainlines? 

What is 'mainline' today was a sideline or an interesting footnote 10 years ago but what was junk then is likely junk now. I find mainlines interesting but when they go 20 moves deep I'm open to exploring footnotes that look interesting after 10 moves. I also find that often critical lines are seldom played because of the idea that ones opponent may be a specialist in the opening. In cases like that I like to look at playing the critical lines & find my experience in it, in time, is good enough to play vs specialists who may not see it that often in practical play.

play with a certain minimum of objectivity always in mind, whether to play main lines or sidelines or a combination is a personal choice. some people play the opening like purists, others are more pragmatic.

this is slightly insulting, it almost presumes these players purposely handicapped themselves for no good reason.  They played the stuff that got them the positions they desired and preferred the trade off of novelty over pure objective superiority.

the best chess player is not always the one who plays the best moves in the ether. Here is a thought experiment. Imagine player A is magnus Carlsen, and player B is a version of magnus Carlsen who has some god-given vision, where in any given position, if the opponent were to deterministically draw agaisnt the best played move in the position, then Carlsen will get a signal of what secondary move will add the complication necessary to win agaisnt this specific opponent, who would you think is the stronger player be? clearly B since player B will be at absolutely best be equal in result to A, in fact it would eek out far more wins.

This thought experiment may sound convoluted but it goes to show the anti-intuitive idea that when it comes to winning, playing objectively the best chess (against humans anyway) may not always lead to optimal results.  I dont see why a chess player coudnt play creatively like a Morozevich, Rapport, Jobava or Ivanchuk in his creative days and have the consistency to blunder far less (and what's esp amazing about these players is how many errors are in their games even outside the opening, like its amazing how often these players come out swinging out of +2 positions and still win vs 2600+ opposition).