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A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

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Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#11

Post by lcuff »

eachro wrote: post #8
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

how does one study tactics?

As I mention in my own comment, Winning Chess by Fred Reinfeld and Irving Chernev. BEST book I've encountered by far of the dozens I've owned.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#12

Post by TameAntelope »

metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

To add to this, the advice I've been given as a new/low rating chess player is to study endgames, if you must study something specific.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#13

Post by pmoriarty »

After a lifetime of chess, I've more recently become a fan of Fischer random chess (aka Chess960)[1], where the back rows of pieces are shuffled before the game begins.

It puts puts people on a more equal footing in terms of their actual chess playing skills instead of their opening memorization abilities.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#14

Post by iamcreasy »

metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

> Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time

Here is a counter argument - below 1700, someone who knows the strength of an opening would outperform those who do not.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#15

Post by antognini »

lcuff wrote: post #10

My advice to beginners is to not stick with one opening, but to play them all. Include wild openings like the Kings Gambit and Danish Gambit, as well as strategic openings like the Queen's Gambit. You will be out of 'the book' very quickly, and that's actually good. You'll be learning to play, rather than recall. Another piece of advice: Study endgames before openings. Learn about K + P vs K, the elementary mates, (K…

> Study endgames before openings.

Growing up we had a copy of The Art of Chess by James Mason. The book starts out with the endgame, goes into the midgame, and ends with openings. The philosophy was that if you don't understand how to play when there are four pieces on the board, how will you be able to play when there are 32?

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#16

Post by sour-taste »

I find it amazing that a game that's so old doesn't have a dominating opening. I see no reason for that to be the case. Maybe it's just a matter of us not having the computational power to find such an opening and analyze it's continuations to completion. I know that there's a huge number of reachable chess states, but it still seems like there could be an opening that always wins.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#17

Post by opportune »

TameAntelope wrote: post #12
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

To add to this, the advice I've been given as a new/low rating chess player is to study endgames, if you must study something specific.

Specifically for endgames you pretty much only need to know two patterns that are rather algorithmic:

How to close a game where you’re up a rook or a queen (without stalemating).

How to close a game where you’re up one pawn, if it’s not a forced stalemate.

Two bishops is maybe something you want to learn. Theoretically knight + bishop as well. I play a lot of bullet chess and pretty much never see these though.

The rest you can really only learn with practice and pattern recognition, like how to move your pawns and how to use a minor piece to secure a win. Well, you can try to learn it algorithmically but I wouldn’t recommend it. After learning those I would move onto tactics, because those are generally how you gain a material or positional advantage that doesn’t rely on a very trivial mistake like leaving a piece uncovered.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#18

Post by idealism »

metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

I understand what you're saying and agree, although I may suggest that 1700 number come down a bit to maybe 1200. I'm around the 1000-1200 range (just picked it up again recently) and I'd say most of my peers on Chess.com around that range have definitely studied openings and present sneaky traps consistently in the first ~5-15 moves.

Playing as black for me is the real driving force for me to study openings because my black game suffers the most from actual Theory openings around 1200. It's not crucial to winning to study the openings because you can often get by with just basic positional play and simple deduction, but a cursory understanding of the most popular openings is a big bang-for-your-buck way to improve in the low 1k range, IMHO.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#19

Post by skulk »

iamcreasy wrote: post #14
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

> Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time Here is a counter argument - below 1700, someone who knows the strength of an opening would outperform those who do not.

The amount of opening preparation that's useful for a sub-1700 is minimal; diminishing returns due to not understanding middlegame positional ideas and shaky tactics hit really hard. When I was really into chess as a kid ~15 years ago, I spent a ton of time reading opening preparation but it was definitely time that I should have spent simply analyzing high level play in all stages of the game because my opponents either didn't know the theory (so while they technically deviated into "worse" lines, I had no hope of understanding why they are "worse" in the general case) or more rarely, they know how to avoid common theory.

I think the most important opening prep for a novice is learning what lines to avoid at all costs. A lot of this, though, can be established with the basics: develop pieces, castle early, control center. Any time your opponent tempts you into violating any of these, think thrice.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#20

Post by saucymew »

If you're looking for an opening book, I recommend FCO Fundamental Chess Openings by Paul van der Sterren for any beginners/under 2000.

FCO is well written with many diagrams (sorry I hate reading move lists), and captures the amateur/pro metas as openings came and went out of favor through the years.

Also, all the cool kids play 960 now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

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