Lesson 5

Openings

The opening is the first few moves of a game, before anybody has attacked anything. You do not have to memorize a single opening to play well. You only need three ideas.

Did you know? A chess game has three parts. The opening is the first ten moves or so, where you get your pieces out and your king safe. The middlegame is where the plans and the attacks happen. The endgame is what is left once most of the pieces have been traded and the kings walk out to fight.

Here is the strange part. After three moves each, there are already 119,060,324 different ways the game could have gone. Even if you play a famous opening exactly the way the books say, the path runs out. Somewhere around move ten or fifteen you step off the end of every path anybody has ever walked. From there on, the game in front of you has almost certainly never been played before by anyone, anywhere.

The three rules of the opening

Take the center. Put a pawn on e4 or d4 (e5 or d5 for Black). Pieces in the middle of the board reach more squares than pieces on the edge.
Wake up your pieces. Get your knights and bishops off the back rank, each one on a good square, one move each. Knights are usually happiest on f3 and c3.
Castle early. Tuck the king into the corner in the first ten moves and your rook joins the game.

Three things to avoid, which are just the rules turned around:

Do not move the same piece twice in the opening unless you have a real reason.
Do not bring your queen out early. She gets chased, and every move that chases her develops another enemy piece.
Do not grab pawns on the edge while your king is still in the middle.

What happens if you ignore the rules

Everybody tries the early queen attack once. Here is what a prepared opponent does to it.

Openings that start 1. e4

The Italian Game

This is the friendliest opening in chess and the best one to learn first. You put a pawn in the center, bring a knight out, and point your bishop straight at f7, the weakest square in Black's camp.

The Ruy Lopez

This one is nearly 500 years old and it is still played in world championship games today. Instead of attacking f7, White goes after the knight that is defending the center.

The Scotch Game

This one is for players who like the board to open up straight away, with lines flying open and pieces meeting early.

The Sicilian Defense

Black's most popular answer to 1. e4 in the entire world. Black refuses to copy White and fights for the center from the side.

The French Defense

Black answers 1. e4 by building a wall of pawns instead of trading blows straight away. It is solid, and it asks for patience.

The Caro-Kann Defense

The same wall-building idea as the French, with one important difference. Black lets the white-squared bishop out first, before the pawns lock it in behind them.

Openings that start 1. d4

The Queen's Gambit

The most famous gambit in chess. White offers a pawn to pull Black's pawn away from the center.

The London System

This one is easy to remember, because White plays almost the same moves no matter what Black does. You learn the set-up once and then use it in every game. If openings feel confusing, start right here.

Did you know? The Ruy Lopez is named after a Spanish priest, Ruy Lopez de Segura, who wrote a chess book in 1561. The Caro-Kann is named after two players, Horatio Caro and Marcus Kann, who wrote about it in 1886. When you play an opening you are borrowing somebody's homework from hundreds of years ago, plus all the analysis the best players have piled on top of it since.

How to actually use this page. Pick one opening for White and one answer for Black, and play them in every game for a month. After a few weeks you will start to recognize the positions the moment they appear on the board, and recognizing positions is most of what chess skill really is.