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 black the French defense (for e4) and the KID (for d4). This is mostly coming from the POV of getting good at the game with a minimum of theory preparation, whilst being able to deploy the same openings in blitz and bullet games if need be.
Another bonus of getting strong at tactics, is that you'll be able to see and appreciate ideas behind the openings and your game analysis will also improve. There are excellent GM analysis videos on Youtube that one can start extracting value from too.
What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin) were two things:
1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a headache. And avoiding endgames because those are just logical grinds.
2) playing with an analysis engine like stockfish.
For me, memorizing defenses was not feasible because it is so broad, but I learned two openings (scotch and queens pawn) and at least know the defenses there because i know the openings. a little bit.
I'll keep at it, memorizing defenses, but I'm old and probably won't cram more into my brain.
EDIT: I used to go to a sunday-night chess meetup before COVID. 1700 on Lichess is nowhere near 1700 FIDE rating (of course, it was at a bar, so I'm usually a few pints in). I stopped going because I got tired of getting my ass kicked, there weren't enough mediocre players there.
The issue I've encountered with memorizing openings is that it assumes both sides are playing perfect openings that complement each other. In reality, in my "lower rated" games, my opponent is likely to make suboptimal moves against the opening I memorized. There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot.
Going through the checklist allows me to play without memorizing movesets even though the moves I make are not the "best".
I agree with the commenter who said that 1200-level players on chess.com do come with opening prep and will try to catch you out with their pet lines. Obviously it's too much to learn refutations for all the crazy gambits out there, but it's worth spending a bit of time understanding openings. The fine article we're commenting on does not go too far -- even for a beginner, it's worth knowing the difference between a Sicilian and a Caro-Kan. Even just learning the first four moves of the common openings is worthwhile, because it will save you time and energy that you need for the middlegame.
I agree that learning deep theoretical lines is a waste of time. Most likely you'll be out of book by move five in an amateur game. So learn a small number of moves (ideally, with a good reason why that move makes sense, even if it's just to develop a piece) and have some idea of the common plans that each side has in that opening.
On what time limit? I'm ~1700 on Rapid but ~1400 on Blitz. I find you need to play a lot of games to get good at quick time limits.
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.
If you have a 1200 level tactics skill and 1500 level openings skill, you are going to be about a 1200 rated player. If you have a 1500 level skill in tactics, you are going to be about a 1500 rated player regardless of whether you've studied openings. Remember: Being able to calculate tactics better helps with openings! Just because your opponent has memorized something and you haven't doesn't mean you can't just calculate on the fly and avoid falling into obvious traps.
https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen...
Now at the 2500 level you get into sequences where you need to see a trap 15 non-forced moves in advance to not fall into it with seemingly natural moves. These can only be found in advance.
At the very least, all players need an understanding of opening fundamentals.
Why? I'm not at that level but I'm sure it can't hurt. I'm not talking about spending hours studying openings, but simply being able to name things is helpful. That way you can pick new ideas along the way, memorize past mistakes more easily, communicate with other players. And it doesn't take much time to know the first few moves of the most common openings.
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.
Study mating.
Chess is not about how you start but how you end.
Particularly if you are weak tactically, you're going to walk into opening traps / blunders if you aren't aware of them.
For blitz openings are essential and the difference between playing into a solid middlegame position in 10 seconds versus wasting one minute reaching an almost equal position.
One example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
Though I do well avoiding Sicilian by playing Alapin (e4 c5 c3).
On what rating system? USCF? Lichess? Chess.com?
[1] https://listudy.org/en/blog/when-to-learn-chess-openings
Here is a counter argument - below 1700, someone who knows the strength of an opening would outperform those who do not.
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.
Another piece of advice: Study endgames before openings. Learn about K + P vs K, the elementary mates, (K + 2B vs K, and K + N + B vs K). Then keep going. I have had to 'finish off' opponents in tournament conditions with these combinations of pieces.
Lastly: Best chess book ever: Winning Chess by Fred Reinfeld and Irving Chernev. Of the dozens of chess books I've owned, this one is head and shoulders above the rest. All about middle game tactics, and mating patterns.
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?
Since then however, I've relaxed my stance. In reality, endgame theory is in some sense, far more complicated than many opening systems, because their are so many degrees of freedom. Yes there are 32 pieces at the start of the game, but prior to development and initial piece placement, there are usually far fewer candidate moves. I think it's a good idea for a beginner to learn at least a few opening systems after getting the "gist" of the endgame like king opposition and opposite color bishops etc.
And I mean, I started to play late and I am not good, but the "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" does not really check out. The two are just different.
This is opposite of general advice. Beginners should play only one white opening and 2 black openings (d4/e4 response) mainly so that they can focus on middlegame and endgame instead.
It puts puts people on a more equal footing in terms of their actual chess playing skills instead of their opening memorization abilities.
I think Chess960 is fun! But many people want to play "traditional chess", not Chess960. Also, knowing a little about traditional chess openings also helps when you're playing Chess960. Memorizing a long list of opening moves isn't helpful, but seeing examples of good openings is helpful even when the starting position is different.
I find this strangely motivational. I guess I'm a sucker for fairness.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess
So, from the perspective of the first move (on each side), given that you can describe almost all games with up to 4 moves out of a possible 20 suggests that there actually is a dominating opening, albeit one a single-move long.
I am 1930 on lichess blitz (so probably ~1700 FIDE). If I guide the game into lines I know well, I can get both a positional and time advantage since my opponent has to think longer.
I have never held a rating, recently played against an NM and got completely crushed. Rapid most of the time. Though I prefer increment and something like 5+5 is fun.
>I am 1930 on lichess blitz (so probably ~1700 FIDE). If I guide the game into lines I know well, I can get both a positional and time advantage since my opponent has to think longer.
Early on with chess I memorized a couple openings. I knew all sidelines of Ruy Lopez, queens gambit, and sicilian. My problem was that when my memory fails me or right about the time I land outside this memorization. That's when I fell apart.
I switched it up and I played only fischer random for quite some time, the goal was to have to figure it out. I became much more principled. So I obey opening principles 90% of the time but the goal is to be constantly adding pressure as opposed to 'if he plays X I have to play Y'
This way I don't have to remember anything. It's ideal.
Spassky had a peak rating of 2690 and Fischer’s was 2785, which puts him about 19th in the world today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_top_chess_play...
- 800 at 10 years old
- 1200 at 9,
- 1600 at 10,
- 1880 at 15,
- 2400 at 17,
- 2500 at 20 and
- 2700 at 22I don't remember much from my chess obsessed youth, but going e4 and moving the bishop/queen into position for a 4 move checkmate will always remain. When I subbed middle school years ago it was my go to whenever playing students. Oh man the reactions I'd get when it worked, lol.
I've been meaning to get back into chess more seriously, this looks like a helpful guide.
I do not think that Chess960 helps humans against computers. 960 possibilities is just too small an amount of randomness. Besides, computers now have substantial advantages against humans in anything where full knowledge is available. But if the point of a game is to have fun, then Chess960 meets the criterion. Try it out!
On a different note, in case anyone finds it helpful, here's a CLI tool [3] I wrote last week which you can use to build opening repertoires. The intended use case is to 1) download the games of a chess player from a website like openingtree.com, 2) run the tool on the fetched PGN file to generate an opening repertoire, and 3) import the output into a study tool like lichess or chessable.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxUuueHFfFs
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