Originally posted by huntingbearI see your point! 🙂 Though I have to say that only rarely do our opponents seem to indulge us in our wish, we mostly face e4 and d4. The idea is, as I see it, to get to also play against non-standard openinings. Then again, personally I don't blame opponents that don't go along with this if they have no experience at all with playing non-e4 or d4 openings. I'd rather play against an opponent that has some sort of idea about the opening he's playing, than one that is forcibly stumbling in the dark. 🙂
Pyrrho, I seriously considered joining you guys during your last big membership drive. The problem is the clan's stated preference for your opponents not to open with 1.e4 or 1.d4. I want my opponents to do that so I can stun them with 1...a6 or 1...b5 🙂
I don't think that getting to play against non-standard openings with you is a problem though! If you send me a challenge one of these days if you've got the time and interest, I'd be curious to see how I fare against such opening-oddities. (Should I be white, I'll indulge you by going "softcore" in my opener. 🙂 )
-Jarno
I finally decided to try to answer the question of this thread although I am not so good a player that my thoughts about opening would be of any use when starting to study openings. I just happen to like writing stuff like this. 😵 That means, if you are interested only in really essential stuff, not some strange memories coming into my mind, perhaps it is bettef for you to skip this.
So, when I was taught the rules of chess (when I was about five) and played against my father I opened with 1. d4, which had something to do with "the idea" of moving the pawn in front of the strongest piece. Some DOS Chess program (named chess2.com or chess2.exe) we had opened by bringing knights to f3&c3 (f6&c6), probably from this I adapted the idea of moving knights to mentioned squares after doing 1. d4. (I always had white so I did not have an opening repertoire (😉) for black).
Then, when I was about eleven, I read an elementary chess book (stuff like how to mate with pair of Rooks or Queen or single Rook against lone King, basic tactics ie. ideas like fork, pin and such) From the book's chapter about openings I learned that the idea of opening play is to develop your pieces. And that 1. e4 is the best first move and 1. -e5 the best response. So, I switched to 1. e4. I remember couple of years after this for some strange reason thinking that the arguments for playing 1. e4 were not valid an playing a few times 1. d4 again. (Those days I only played chess two or three times a year, mainly against my brother.)
Then came summer 2000, I went to a "special high school" (somewhat difficult and anyway irrelevant to explain more exactly) and started getting more interested in chess. During the summer we played mainly some Italian-looking 1. e4 e5 -stuff (as my opponents had also probably read from elementary books that 1.e4 is the best 1st move etc.) Some months later I participated my first tournament, and after that started reading another chess book we had at home (pretty elementary but goes much deeper than the book mentioned earlier, I'd probably be better if I had read it through). In that book I first time saw the Queen's Gambit, and started experimenting with it in my games with my opponents (most of them also had gotten excited in chess during the summer), mainly because of the great surprise value of voluntarily giving up a pawn by 2. c4 😀. I really started liking the opening more than the stuff we used to play, and from that on I have almost always played 1. d4. Months later I read that 1. d4 is more used by positional players and 1. e4 by tactical players, I was pretty happy to fins out that, I have always wanted to be a positional player (but, being realistic, at my level there is no such thing as a positional player, perhaps only characterisation that matters is "players who make very much mistakes" and "players who make only quite much mistakes"😉.
With black I still answered 1.e4 by 1.-e5, and first Queen's gambit accepted, but pretty soon switched to QGD as I already at first glance liked that much more (but somehow didn't first dare not take the c4 pawn). Those days, for about a year or so, when I was black I always hoped that my opponent would play 1. d4, because I didn't like the positions evolving from 1.e4 e5 at all. Our friend (a much better chessplayer than "we" were and are) played the French but I for some reason did not want to try that out. during summer 2001 I had experimented with 1. -c6 in FICS blitz games but I always got to hopelessly cramped positions with that. Finally (spring 2002) I tried playing Caro-Kann again, and started liking it. So, from then on I have played Caro-Kann and QGD as black and 1. d4 as white.
In an article about different styled players' opening repertoires written by Finnish GM Jouni Yrjola (in Finnish, so probably not very useful to give url here) there is a mention of a "draw-securing players' repertoire" based on playing Caro-Kann and QGD, which are the openings I play! Pretty interesting, because my philosophy of playing chess probably is something like "first secure I do not lose and only if the opponent gives me winning chances, try to use them", which is probably the idea behind draw-securing players' repertoire. But this certainly hasn't been in my mind when choosing openings.
Finally, I have read (and if I remeber correctly, had read already when I became a 1. d4 player) that a beginner / weak amateur should play open games to gain experience in tactics. But I have never taken these suggestions seriously, because I play chess mainly for fun, not to improve as I think I certainly will never become Master anyway, don't care about perhaps possible improvement from 1300-1400 Finnish ELO to 1700-1800 Finnish ELO). So, I play openings that I consider fun to play, not openings I should play to improve optimally.
(Long post, 😴, probably of no value to anyone, but at least I had fun writing this. 🙂 )
Originally posted by TimmyToiletAgainst 1.e4 I usually play the Scandinavian (Center Counter - 1.-/d5) or the Alekhine Defence (1.-/Nf6). Now I'm trying to understand the Sicilian, preferably the Accelerated Dragon.
Well, I typically play e4 and hope to get into the Ruy Lopez, but I also like playing the French with the white pieces...
-Tim
A few years ago I bought John Nunn's 'The Ultimate Pirc', but it's very encyclopaedic. So, not really my cup of tea.
For openings out of my small repertoire, I depend on the MCO and Fritz Powerbook 2002 (ChessBase).
Cheerio!
Jan
With white pieces:
King's Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.f4 ...)
Ruy Lopez(Spanish) (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 ...)
With black pieces:
on 1.e4 almost always 1. ... e5 (King's pawn game)
on 1.d4 I respond with Modern defense (1. ... g6), or Queen's pawn game (1. ... d5), or occasionaly Indian defense (1. ... Nf6).
In games in which White decides to play some more exotic opening I just counter in the center.
Originally posted by Marlone56I'm beginning to like the grunfeld as well. I've been playing it more and more lately. As white I was almost exclusively e5 looking for the ruy lopez. Recently, however, I've started playing w/ the Bird opening 1.f4 w/ some success. The things I like about it are that it's a bit unusual and so people aren't as familiar w/ it and it seems to only transpose into a couple of possible lines. Whereas w/ e5 I'm likely to face the pirc or the french which I'm not a big fan of. although the sicilian is fine (2. c3 for me) As black against e5 I go right w/ the stanadard defence ready for the lopez or bishop game or whatever.
If you play the black pieces try CENTER-COUNTER GAMBIT. And if you're playing white, try GRUENFELD🙄