Question by MthrNatures_Son: How can I easily study chess openings?
I am about a 1400 USCF rated chess player. I’m not proud of this! I study 500-1000 rapid fire/timed tactic problems suited to my level each week.
Aside from needing improvement in all areas, I really feel disadvantaged in the opening. Up until now, I have never studied it! Other than my interpretations of controlling the center, actively developing pieces, and castling quickly I feel at a strong disadvantage to players around my level who have some rudimentary systems in place for the first few moves in the game.
I want to do this as well, but I’m not sure how. I suppose I could chose from the millions of openings and then try to study resulting middle games, end games, and tactical motifs. It seems overwhelming. What I have are a few basic ideas that get me into the game, but I’d like to improve that just a bit.
Can someone offer ideas on how to “study the opening.” Or more specifically what about the opening I should be studying.
I plan to continue my tactics, middle game, and end game study. I just want to balance it out with a small percentage of opening study.
Best answer:
Answer by Ryan Try to read Mastering the Chess Openings: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Modern Chess Openings, Volume 1 by Watson.
Question by Thrice Blessed: Is there an online resource about chess openings, that would let me look up openings by first move…?
… by first move rather than by name. For example, instead of needing to know it is called “Benko’s Opening” I could just enter the first move “g3″ and get a list of openings and variations that start that way? So I could study based on what I need to know, rather than by being expected to already know the name of the opening?
Hope that made sense!
Best answer:
Answer by TheGoodFight I play chess too but never have studied it much. I bet I’ve played 30,000 games on http://www.pogo.com/. I get caught up in those 1 minute games, however, and that’s bad chess.
Here is something I found for you…may not be quite what you’re looking for but interesting:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer
What may help you is to know how to navigate www.google.com or any other search site better.
If you will put your search in quotes such as “chess openings from E3″ then it will only give you search results that have those exact words in it exactly how you entered it. This will greatly help you to find what you’re looking for when searching. If it doesn’t produce good results then change it up a little.
If you already knew this then forgive me.
Perhaps we can play on pogo sometime. My name there is spiritandtruth_
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
? facebook.com ? twitter.com ? OnlineChessLessons.net Paul Morphy Vs Consultants (Count Isouard & Duke of Brunswick), Paris 1858 — Morphy, an absolute attacking monster, produces a legendary 17 move classic. This has got to be one of my favorite games of all time, as the New Orleans native literally introduces a new threat with every single move. He clearly demonstrates the 3 Basic Opening Principles 1. Control the center. 2. Develop your pieces. 3. Protect your king. An extremely impressive victory by the 21 year-old Paul Morphy! Note: The story about this game taking place in a theatre and how he played this game in a rushed way is probably an urban myth PGN: [Event "?"] [Site "?"] [Date "1858.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Morphy"] [Black "Consultants"] [Result "1-0"] [ICCResult "Black checkmated"] [Opening "Philidor's defense"] [ECO "C41"] [NIC "KP.08"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 Bg4 4. dxe5 Bxf3 5. Qxf3 dxe5 6. Bc4 Nf6 7. Qb3 Qe7 8. Nc3 c6 9. Bg5 b5 10. Nxb5 cxb5 11. Bxb5+ Nbd7 12. OOO Rd8 13. Rxd7 Rxd7 14. Rd1 Qe6 15. Bxd7+ Nxd7 16. Qb8+ Nxb8 17. Rd8# {Black checkmated} 1-0
The Smith Morra Gambit is a sharp and aggressive line for white against the very popular Sicilian Defense. Most players that play e4 run into the Sicilian and if they want to get out of book lines and take an aggressive approach the Smith Morra Gambit is a great way to go. www.thechesswebsite.com Chess Software used in the video can be found at http and www.chessok.com
www.OnlineChessLessons.net – (“Show More” for more info …) Facebook www.facebook.com Twitter: www.twitter.com This video examines the game @olit3, (The owner of chesstweets) vs ChessTweets. This was played towards the beginning of the Chess Tweets experiment nearly a year ago. White chose an interesting opening (the Center Game?) involving an early development of the queen to a somewhat exposed square on e3. Opposite sides castling ensued, and white eagerly sacrificed a knight to open up the H-file to create faster attacking chances against the black king. Black accepted the sacrifice, but only after a few well-calculated intermediate moves. The Chess Tweets community coldly repelled black’s attack and successfully achieved a winning counter-attack. Also make sure to checkout ChessTweets where you can play correspondence games via twitter using the ChessTweets interface. Check them out: www.ChessTweets.com http
www.OnlineChessLessons.net – (“Show More” for more info …) Facebook www.facebook.com Twitter: www.twitter.com This video discusses a mid-game analysis of the on-going correspondence twitter game between OnlineChessLessons.Net (OCL) and the ChessTweets community. We played an off-beat variation as white against the Najdorf involving Be2 and a very early g4. Black (ChessTweets) responded with an early 0-0 and allowed white to gain space with g5. In this video, I discuss some of my preliminary research (portrayed in other videos on the OnlineChessLessons.Net Youtube Channel on this specific line against the Sicilian) that suggest impeding white’s early gain of space with g5 by the preventive move h6. The current game has headed in an interesting direction and I’ll enjoy to see how plays out. Also make sure to checkout ChessTweets where you can play correspondence games via twitter using the ChessTweets interface. Check them out: www.ChessTweets.com http
The Kings Indian Defense is a very common and strong defense from black that looks to fortify his king side safety and then counter attack white’s central control of the board. This is not an aggressive defense from black but still very effective and seen quite often at high level play. www.thechesswebsite.com Chess Software used in the video can be found at http and www.chessok.com
Hey guys. I just wanted to show an interesting opening I ran into. If you are Matt Pullin or jrobi: Thanks for inspiring me to do a chess video! GreenCastleBlack has mentioned that there is an Elephant Opening game in mjsharks videos and you can watch that here: www.youtube.com This video is about the Elephant Opening, an opening for black The Elephant opening is characterised by the following short move order: 1. e4 e5 2. nf3 d5!? Now the reason why this move d5 gets a questionable (!?) is because, at below Master level play at least, it has a quite respectable win percentage for black. The reason I am focusing on this particular opening is because when I was testing wiibrew chess (link in sidebar wiibrew.org it was the opening that the Wii used against me and it absolutely threw me having never seen it before. In that game, I got stomped by the Elephant The reason being: All I could see after 3. exd5 was … Qxd5 and I could gain tempo on the Queen with 4. Nc3, attacking the Queen. After a horrific defeat in under 15 moves by the computer, I went back to the drawing board to work out just what exactly went wrong. I couldnt find alot of solid material about the opening, so I decided to strike out on my own and see if I could discover the concepts of the Elephant Opening. Psychologically: The opening appears to be a pointless sacrifice. This is one of the Elephant openings strengths and one reason behind its good lower-level win percentage. Unlike its White counterpart …
In the Falkbeer Countergambit, black immediately challenges the center against the king’s gambit from white. The aggression is taken away from white and given to black. White must be very careful not to play anything incorrectly or black can take over the game very quickly. This is a great defense for anyone that sees the kings gambit often and wants to throw their opponent a loop. www.thechesswebsite.com Chess Software used in the video can be found at http and www.chessok.com
PGN: [Event "?"] [Site "?"] [Date "1858.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Morphy"] [Black "Consultants"] [Result "1-0"] [ICCResult "Black checkmated"] [Opening "Philidor's defense"] [ECO "C41"] [NIC "KP.08"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 Bg4 4. dxe5 Bxf3 5. Qxf3 dxe5 6. Bc4 Nf6 7. Qb3 Qe7 8. Nc3 c6 9. Bg5 b5 10. Nxb5 cxb5 11. Bxb5+ Nbd7 12. OOO Rd8 13. Rxd7 Rxd7 14. Rd1 Qe6 15. Bxd7+ Nxd7 16. Qb8+ Nxb8 17. Rd8# {Black checkmated} 1-0