What is a good process for studying and learning chess openings?
I’m an intermediate club level player, but I’ve never taken much time to learn a lot of chess openings. I know general opening principles (develop quickly, control the center, etc.), and recognize a decent number of openings during play. But I think it’s time to buckle down and start studying specific openings and their variations.
I’m wondering if anyone has suggestions for a good *process* to use for this study. Suggestions on particularly good books to work with would be welcome too, but more than that, I am trying to set up a solid program. Should I just start with one opening and memorize it? Work through variations one by one? Start with only king openings, or only queen, or…? Is it better to study on my own, or with others at the club? How much time should I spend?
And so forth.
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First of all, get out a piece of paper and pen. Write down openings you know. You "know" an opening if you can play its sequence, refer to it by its name and write out its notations. For those openings that you know, do you know its variations? Make a note of that as well
Once you have logged what you know, eliminate them from your studies. You need to concentrate on those that you are unfamiliar with. Next, get yourself some literature, whether online or in book form. If you don’t have a copy of Capablanca’s "Chess Fundamentals", get one. You obviously might want some specific books on openings. I recommend "Mastering the Chess Openings" by John Watson.
List those openings you feel will most commonly suit your style, then list others you wish to add to your studies. learning them "all" (that’s relative) is a tall task, but list any openings you’re going to apply to your training. Then get out a board, a notation sheet and go down your list one by one. Make notes on them as you learn them. How well they fit your style, if you need more work on a particular sequence, etc.
Before you move from one opening to the next, you should know its name, the sequence, the notations, defenses and variations. Its time consuming and sometimes mind-wracking but it will pay off.
I have used this method of study (lots of online resources too) to teach myself openings and endgames. Midgame strategies and other intricate facets of the game such as sacrifices, traps and uncommon mates are best learned with another player.
Good luck, and whatever you do… DON’T take that "free" pawn.
-Clay A
there is a cool comp. game called chessmaster (some-odd thousand #), and it helped me learn chess fast. and it makes it really fun.
honestly I don’t believe you should study openings a great deal if you already relize the basic principals. Work on the middle to late game first then openings. That being said, I learned my openings one at a time. I learned what kind of player I wanted to be (Ofensive, defensive, use the queen alot, counter, overload one side.) And from that I developed the opening I thought was best for my style, I would suggest begining with simple openings and do what you think you shuold do to continue the opening, then check a book or site and look how it is truly done and see what you think would help more, sometimes your improvisation works better. Also for me I use different openings for black and white, blakc being more defensive/countering, you might want to see how that would work for you using different openings for defferent colors. Finally, I would say to study with a club, you use one opening and test it against other openings, see how they work, maybe you like the other guys opening better, ask him to teaqch you it, but as long as you know the basic understanding of an opening you should be succesful if you can build up and close out a game.