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