Choosing An Opening

All Things Chess
1

Greetings to you!

I’m new to these forums, and this is in fact my first post. I’m 30, and have been casually playing chess on and off for about 22 years now. I’m now trying to take chess a bit more seriously, have joined the USCF, and am about one month away from my first small tournament. Mainly, I’m doing this as I have started a chess club at the high school I teach at, and would like to expand my knowledge in all aspects, that way if students want to continue with chess, I have some informed and educated suggestions for them.

I’ve been wrestling around with the idea of expanding my opening repitoire before the tournament so that I have more than just my current two “comfortable” situations of Queen’s Gambit for white, and the Modern Defence (1…g6, 2…Bg7). I was hoping to hear a few suggestions/answers to the following questions. Feel free to respond to all or just some of them.

  1. How did you choose your opening for study, particularly when you were first starting to take chess more seriously?

  2. Some books suggest a chess player new to the scene experiment with several openings, and go with the ones he/she feels more comfortable with. How do you know which ones you feel comfortable with? I feel comfortable with just about any game…until I start to get behind in material, pawn structure, time, etc. It always seems to do more with the opponent than the opening chosen.

  3. How much attention/effort should be given an opening before you would feel comfortable with it for competitive play?

  4. Is there an easy, quick source for exploring not just what the openings are (I’ve already found oodles of those online) but what the main directive strategy is behind the opening, such as main concept, theories, goals, and especially strengths and weaknesses.

Many, many thanks for any insight and time you offer these questions!

Rich Lund

2

You might try Reuben Fine’s The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings. It’s an older book, but you shouldn’t have any problem finding it at your favorite online retailer for $2 or less. At that price, you’re not out much if it turns out not to be all that helpful.

Alex Relyea

3

And THIS is why you shouldn’t be focusing on openings. Go buy Silman’s Complete Endgame Course and a good book of tactics puzzles instead.

That goes for the rest of you rated below 1800, too. Including me.

4

To: Mr. Lund,

I usually show my students an inverted pyramid with four sections, which are:
(1) Play tournament (or simulated tournament) chess (G/60 with clock and keeping score);
(2) Study tactics;
(3) Analyze your games with someone stronger;
(4) Study openings & endings.

You should then spend most of your time with 1 (the base of the pyramid, inverted so to be at the top); and the least of your time with 4 (the tip of the pyramid, inverted so to be at the bottom).

There are plenty of books on tactics to choice from. Two of my favorite are:
(a) “Combinational Motifs” by Maxim Blokh (Moscow 2000), it can be a hard book to find, but well worth getting;
(b) “The Manual of Chess Combinations” by Sergey Ivanshchenko (Moscow 2009), aka known as “Chess School” and comes in volumes 1a, 1b, 2 & 3. I purchased extra copies for my students, and then cut the answers out of the back using a box knife.

As for openings to teach High School students. Everyone will have their own approach. I use to teach 1. e4 e5 with the Italian Game to beginning students (which is the way I learned chess). Unfortunately, because of the tactical nature of these openings, and the unwillingness of my students to study these positions, I have switched to a totally new approach. I teach the following openings:

(1) As Black against 1. e4, the Scandinavian with 1… d5 2. exe5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 etc.
(2) As Black against 1. d4, the Dutch with 1… f5 (including the Leningrad Dutch, Classical Dutch, and the Stonewall Dutch, this way not everyone is playing the same variations of the Dutch).
(3) As White, the Birds with 1. f4 (which often is just a Dutch reversed).
(4) As White, the Larsen Attack with 1. b3.

I give them just the very basics of each of these openings, and ask them to learn the opening by playing it. If they get frustrated when they lose, I tell them it is not the opening’s fault, but their experience will help them better understand how to play these openings. This limits the study of openings to the minimum, and most of their opponents knows so little about these openings, that they have an advantage in theory. These are my “starter” openings for beginning students, more advanced players are encouraged to learn and play other openings so that the team will have some diversity.

Steven Craig Miller (chess coach)

5

I have to agree with this because I have read this advice from highly qualified sources over and over again. I have embarked on such a course of study, and it greatly improved my game. My misery still stems from my moving too quickly and making one monumental blunder per most of my games.

Silman’s book is EXCELLENT! I also use Laszlo Polgar’s massive chess problem book (5,334 tactical problems).

I work on a general understanding of the openings, having two or three favorites.

6

I would agree with half your suggestion.

In my opinion, studying endgames ranks right down there with studying opening. It is okay to study them, but the time one allots to them should be far less than the study of tactics. If you play someone who understand tactics better than you, and this person checkmates you in the middlegame, you’ll never get to use your endgame knowledge.

On the other hand, some endgame problems can be very beneficial if you study them without moving the pieces. One of the goals of studying tactics (in addition to leaning tactical motifs) is helping you develop your ability to calculate and visualize chess positions without moving the chess pieces. You can study some endgame problems in the same manner, using them as exercises to help you visualize the solution without moving the pieces.

But all in all, understanding tactical motifs will do more for your chess improvement than endgame study (especially for those rated below 2000).

Steven Craig Miller

7

This is actually why I like Silman’s Complete Endgame Course. Unlike most endgame books, which are sorted by the types of pieces involved in the endgame, this one is sorted in order of importance. It starts with basics that every low level player needs to learn (lone queen mate, lone rook mate, etc), then moves on to lone pawn endgames, etc. Every starting player should read the first two chapters. Then, as they reach a point where more of their games get decided in the endgame, they can move on to the next chapters, one at a time, as needed, and they’ll get the material fed to them in easily digestible chunks, in order of how often the scenarios show up in games.

Just ignore Silman’s approximation of which rating class should be reading which chapter and go with your own experience. If you find yourself reaching more endgames where you don’t know what to do, then it’s time to move on to the next chapter.

–Fromper

8

While not the only one, this reply has already helped. I also very much agree now that tactics is where my training should lie. Many thanks for the plentiful responses!