Teaching openings to complete beginners

Andrew Karklins is a friend: I should hold my tongue. :slight_smile:

It’s not as bad as its reputation, but it’s not as good as the Schliemann.

One could reason abstractly (in the “reasonable” style of your first response to me): “In the Spanish 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5, White has spent a tempo developing the bishop. Redeploying the bishop on the critical a2-g8 diagonal would now lose a tempo, and that’s why the Schliemann is stronger than the Latvian.” As “lies” goes (translation = oversimplifications for didactic purposes), this statement is fairly true.

I would rather say, in the spirit of Hendriks’s Move First, Think Later, something like “The Schliemann is stronger than the Latvian because of these concrete variations” [opening database dump here].

We don’t want to inflict this level of detail on beginners just yet, but we shouldn’t hide the concrete (sometimes absurdly concrete) nature of chess from them.

I am a big fan of the late Irving Chernev, yet Logical Chess: Move by Move is full of “lies”

If you are teaching someone chess from scratch, you have the unique opportunity and responsibility to prevent bad habits from starting. While tactics are the fun part of chess, openings are the first strategic lesson. Twenty years of teaching chess in a classroom setting, has given me a rather simple approach to have kids discover “theoretical” openings by themselves.

Two requirements make our premises for understanding openings:

  1. Every move must aim at the center (a definition).

  2. Every move must develop (another definition), or help to develop.

Going over the possible twenty first moves, only five fit our two requirements. Others may fit one, but not both. Those are 50-50 moves. Others should be immediately rejected.

Now for an approach (strategical aim):

Let’s say white plays 1. e4. Black now get no move. What would be white’s best second move? There are many good moves, that meet our two requirements, but which is best?

Final conclusion: 2. d4! Every center square is aimed at or occupied. Every piece may develop. (We include rooks and the king as developed only by castling.)

Now the student has learned the big center (classical center). Black should try the same with 1…e5 & 2…d5, or crack the establishment of white’s big center by trading a pawn for a center white pawn.

After 1. e4, e5, white should first try 2. d4: the Center Game, a perfectly playable opening, with which a Spanish GM once defeated World Champion Karpov. Pluses and minuses can be discussed.

Now after 1.e4, e5, we try to prepare Pd4 with 2. Nf3. After 2…Nc6 (highly recommended, but not the only move):

3.d4, 3…ef will be highly recommended, breaking white’s big center.

Learning from the very beginning to count how many pieces each player has developed, is an important teaching goal.

Understanding the classical approach to openings is required before understanding other ideas, such as hypermodern and gambits.

Personally, I see no need to teach opening names. Once, given this approach, I watched two very young players create: 1.e4, e5 2. Nf3, Nc6 3. Bb5. I said Bobby Fischer used to play that. The class started to call it, Fischer’s Opening.

This is just a start…

All the best, Joe

Mr. Lux, your last post is a great example of why brevity is not always a virtue in the Forums. :slight_smile: Very well said.

It did take 20 years to refine this.

Joe, I recently wrote a little step by step monograph for a young student of mine on the Center Game. We renamed it the Elephant Attack a tribute to the two tusks at e4 and d4. Its cousin is the Elephant Gambit that is played by Black. Spent a lot of time looking at some old games from the 1800s as well as games from the present, especially by GM Alex Shabalov. There seems to be a lot of room for improvement by White in this line. Unlike many openings, White gets his Queenside out quickly, has active squares for his Kingside pieces, a relatively safe King, and the ability to use his pawns in an attack. It engages so many of the pieces that it seems okay for scholastic players to try it before they transition to other double e-pawn openings. When they then play the Italian Game or Spanish Game they should be better prepared to play tactically and use their pawns to attack or sacrifice to open lines. It isn’t always clear what Black should do to equalize in particular opening positions. As long as the kids are going to break the rules and lose a pawn anyway, at least they should get an attack as compensation.

Very good. I find tournament players below 800 can quickly win a bishop in a few moves with the Scotch Game. So many tactics can be instructed very early in openings, without gambits, which I recommend much later in student development.

All the best, Joe

Worth repeating!

btw My first post covers three different lessons.

All the best, Joe

I’ve seen strong players develop their understanding of chess using hypermodern openings while avoiding classical openings.

Did you know them BEFORE they were strong players? They weren’t born strong players.

All the best, Joe

Here is a review by Randy Bauer: wp.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews … chess.html

For beginners and intermediate players, a chess player’s chess strength is not based on opening knowledge, but on his or her knowledge of tactics and his or her ability to concentrate so as to focus one’s full attention upon the game. Your assertion that one MUST know classical openings before being able to understand hypermodern or gambit openings is just plain wrong. As a High School chess coach for over ten years, I’ve seen players develop using all sorts of openings.

When I was beginning to play tournament chess some 30 to 40 years ago, I was told that one should learn openings just as they evolved historically, namely one should first play gambit openings (King’s Gambit, Italian Game, Evans Gambit etc), then the classical openings (Ruy Lopez and Queen’s Gamibt), and last the hypermodern openings.

But I seriously doubt that there is only one way to learn chess, except that beginners need to spend most of their time learning tactics. In an earlier post in this thread I laid out a hypermodern approach to learning chess opening for beginners. I can understand why it was ignored, it goes against what most people have been taught. But the title of this tread is “teaching openings to complete beginners.” And I’ve seen beginners use hypermodern openings and develop into strong chess players.

Mr. Miller:

The major danger for beginners is to learn five or six moves of an opening, and not start thinking until those moves are completed. Even move #1 has thought to it, with immediate reason to be played. Thinking every move is an important habit, starting from move one. Besides, it is easier to remember a specific move, when it is backed up with a heuristic. We are humans, not computers.

I wouldn’t argue that it is tactics that win the game. For beginners’ games, that is the most important. However, it is still optimum to start the game with some advantages, like space and development, than to be without.

“Strong players” has not been defined by either of us. I don’t consider anyone strong, under 2300. I don’t consider any games worth serious consideration, unless one player is over 2600, or is played by someone, who is internationally recognized as an opening specialist/theoretician.

You still haven’t answered my question.

All the best, Joe

Mr. Miller:

My 20 year experience is from teaching K-8. Those early grades are taught how the pieces move, and we go on from there.

How many show up at a high school chess club, without already knowing how to castle and what checkmate is?

The point of this thread was for complete beginners.

All the best, Joe

Before I started working with High School students, I was chess coach for a private K-12 school. Most of my chess students were 5-8 graders. I’m not trying to suggest that teaching beginners classical openings is necessarily bad, it just seems to me to be overly dogmatic. One could use hypermodern openings to teach the basics of openings just as easily as classical openings. The same basic principles apply to both, namely: (a) development, (b) move only those pawns which help development; and (c) either control or counter-attack the center.

My 5-8 graders won one or two trophies for every tournament we went to. Our success was based on one simple factor. We had chess practice more often than the other schools in our area.

Always the key to success!

With Black against 1.d4, the Nimzo-Indian is a good opening for beginners: kingside development, and a fight for the e4 square. We only think of it as hypermodern because Tarrasch was such a stick-in-the-mud.

With Black against 1.e4…? Not sure about that.

A complete beginner must be taught, why 1…Nf6.

Shortcut opening for black: 1…c6, 2…d5 against everything!?!

All the best, Joe

Some related thoughts can be seen in

Subject: Greg on Building an Opening Repertoire

and the subsequent discussion.

I was using “strong” as a relative term, that is, “strong” compared to his or her peers. After all, we were talking about teaching beginners. I wouldn’t claim to have any great insight as to how to teach 2300s how to play chess. Or even the best way to reach master level. My peak was only 2149. But I have worked with both 5-8 graders, as well as High School students.

I would suggest three major heuristics for the opening: (1) development, (2) control or counter attack the center; (3) pawn moves should only be made if they help one of the two above goals.

Thus it shouldn’t make any difference whether a beginner starts out with 1. b3, 1. g3, 1. c4, 1. d4 , 1. e4, 1. f4 or 1. Nf3.