How to Learn a Good Opening Strategy in Chess

Opening strategies are what set the stage for the rest of the game of chess. Here is a guide for how to find out what strategies are best for you.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Knowledge of how to play chess

1. Visit websites that Chessgames.com to find collections of chess games by master players. Find certain players whose style you enjoy and notice what move sequences they use in the start of the game. The first moves in chess are called the "opening."

2. Usually these opening strategies will have names like "Queen's Indian" or "King's Gambit" or "Caro-Kann." These are names for families of opening strategies.

3. To learn more about how to effectively play these strategies, you can get a generalized opening book such as Nunn's Chess Openings or Modern Chess Openings. Or, you can get a book specialized in whatever particular strategy you want to study.

4. To learn more about one of these books before you order them, you can read reviews on Amazon. There are also chess-centered web sites that extensively review chess books like JeremySilman.com and chessville.com. Some strategies are also discussed online on sites like videochess.net

5. After you have your opening strategy information, try to practice it by playing chess online. Remember that most opening strategies cannot be tried in all circumstances, so you will need to learn more than one opening strategy to be able to know what you are doing in every game.

6. Keep a log of the games you lose and try to deduce why you lost. Often, you will win a promising position in the opening and then lose in the middlegame or the endgame. If this is the case, you should be proud that you were at least able to make your opening strategy work and consider studying endgame or middlegame technique next.

7. If you find that even with your new strategies, you are still losing almost as soon as the game begins, you need to re-evaluate certain lines and consider alternatives.

8. When reaching a solid position with your favorite opening almost becomes second nature, you know that you've made considerable progress.

9. Among top-level players, opening theory is always being debated. Keep an eye out for new developments and theoretical novelties.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't spend all of your time studying the opening! The endgame in particular is not to be neglected.

[AlishaV]

on 1/18/2009 I always make the same moves when I start a game. I probably should study and find some better ideas!