My FAVORITE Chess Openings by Rating
Summary
TLDRThis video script offers chess enthusiasts a guide to selecting effective openings across different skill levels. For beginners, the London System and Stonewall Attack with white pieces are recommended for their solid development and control of the center. As players advance, the script suggests exploring gambits and more aggressive openings like the Vienna and Closed Sicilian. For black, the King's Indian Defense and Scandinavian Defense are highlighted for their safety and simplicity. The video also emphasizes the importance of analyzing personal statistics to refine one's opening repertoire.
Takeaways
- 😀 The speaker was a chess teacher before becoming a streamer and YouTube content creator.
- 🏰 The London System is recommended for beginners playing with white, as it follows basic principles and is easy to learn.
- 🔰 For beginners, the Stonewall Attack is another effective opening with white, offering a more aggressive playstyle.
- 🤔 The Fried Liver Attack is suggested for e4 openings, emphasizing the importance of controlling the center with pawns or pieces.
- 👑 The King's Indian Defense is a versatile choice for black against various white openings, focusing on safety and central control.
- 🇸🇪 The Scandinavian Defense is a simple opening for black that involves an early queen sortie, which can lead to straightforward development.
- 🐉 The Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense is recommended for black, especially for those familiar with the King's Indian structure.
- 🤺 Intermediate players with white can explore gambits like the Danish Gambit and the King's Gambit for early pawn sacrifices to gain initiative.
- 🎓 The Vienna Gambit is highlighted as a favorite for intermediate players with white against the Sicilian Defense, offering high win rates.
- 🏴☠️ The Closed Sicilian and Smith-Morra Gambit are recommended for intermediate players with white, focusing on attacking the opponent's king.
- 🛡 At advanced levels, the Catalan and English Openings are solid choices for white, emphasizing long-term positional play and strategic planning.
Q & A
What was the speaker's profession before becoming a YouTuber?
-The speaker was a chess teacher before they started streaming and making YouTube videos.
What is the main purpose of the video?
-The main purpose of the video is to share the speaker's recommendations for the best chess openings for players of different skill levels, from beginners to advanced.
Which opening does the speaker recommend for beginners playing with the white pieces?
-For beginners playing with the white pieces, the speaker recommends the London System, which starts with the queen's pawn and a setup based on the dark-squared bishop on f4.
What are the basic principles the London System follows according to the speaker?
-The London System follows basic principles such as fighting for the center without the drawbacks, solid development of pieces, and ensuring the king's safety.
What is the game plan for a beginner playing the London System?
-The game plan for a beginner playing the London System is to play regular recreational moves, then place the knight on e5 to create an attack, and vary the play between castling, creating a kingside pawn storm, or breaking in the center.
What is the Stonewall Attack and how does it differ from the London System?
-The Stonewall Attack is another opening for beginners that starts with e3, bishop d3, and f4, with the dark-squared bishop staying home and the central pawn being advanced. It is more aggressive than the London System but has a positional drawback as the central square can be blocked.
What opening does the speaker suggest for beginners playing with the black pieces?
-For beginners playing with the black pieces, the speaker suggests the King's Indian setup, which involves playing d6, knight f6, g6, bishop g7, and castling.
What is the main idea behind the King's Indian setup for black?
-The main idea behind the King's Indian setup is to control some central space, develop all pieces safely, and navigate the middle game carefully to build experience and climb the rating ladder.
What is the speaker's opinion on the Scandinavian Defense for beginners?
-The speaker thinks the Scandinavian Defense is a simple opening for beginners to play, as it involves getting the queen out early and then following up with easy moves, despite the queen being attacked.
Which opening does the speaker recommend for intermediate players with the white pieces and why?
-For intermediate players with the white pieces, the speaker recommends the Vienna Opening because it is aggressive and can lead to a high win rate against e45 positions.
What is the key to the Dutch Defense recommended by the speaker for intermediate players with black?
-The key to the Dutch Defense is to temporarily weaken the king to gain a strong pawn storm and central control, which can be advantageous because it is played less frequently by white, giving black an edge.
What does the speaker suggest for advanced players with white to take their game to the next level?
-For advanced players with white, the speaker suggests playing mainline positions with e4, incorporating gambits, and considering the Catalan and English openings for solid play and long-term strategic planning.
What is the Trumpowski opening mentioned by the speaker and why is it effective at higher levels?
-The Trumpowski opening involves playing bishop g5 after d4, knight f6, not allowing the opponent to play a King's Indian, Grunfeld, or Benoni. It is effective at higher levels because it creates a solid system with traded off dark-squared bishops and rebuilt light-squared pieces, leading to strong pressure.
How does the speaker advise advanced players with black to approach e4 e5 positions?
-The speaker advises advanced players with black to approach e4 e5 positions by playing g6 systems, which can lead to King's Indian or Bird variations, and to consider sidelines of mainline openings to surprise opponents with less familiarity.
What is the speaker's advice on studying and choosing the right opening?
-The speaker advises players to check their statistics to understand their performance with different colors and opening repertoires, to try new openings with a sample size of 5-10 games, and to be patient with the learning curve, which can take up to 30-40 games.
Outlines
🤔 Chess Openings for Beginners and Intermediates
The speaker shares their experience as a chess teacher, recommending specific openings for players with different skill levels. For beginners, they suggest the London System and the Stonewall Attack with white pieces, emphasizing solid development and control of the center. With black, they advocate the King's Indian Defense and the Scandinavian Defense for their simplicity and ability to counter various white setups. The Fried Liver Attack is also mentioned as a strong weapon for beginners. The focus is on openings that are easy to learn, promote good principles, and offer a solid game plan.
🎯 Intermediate Level Chess Openings and Strategies
Moving on to intermediate players, the speaker highlights the effectiveness of the Vienna Gambit and the Closed Sicilian Defense against the Sicilian Defense, emphasizing aggressive play and targeting the opponent's weaknesses. They also mention gambits like the Danish Gambit and the King's Gambit for creating early initiatives. The speaker encourages the use of an openings database and computer analysis to enhance understanding and success with these openings. They suggest incorporating tricky move orders and sidelines to catch opponents off guard and gain an advantage.
🏆 Advanced Chess Openings for Mastery and Dominance
For advanced players rated 1800 and above, the speaker recommends maintaining pressure with 1.e4 and exploring mainline positions while avoiding direct theory confrontations. They endorse the Vienna Gambit and the Catalan Opening for their solidity and long-term pressure. The Trumpowski Variation of the Grünfeld Defense is highlighted for its ability to create strong threats and damage the opponent's structure. The English Opening is also suggested for its positional play and reliance on strategic planning over immediate tactics.
📊 Analyzing Chess Performance and Choosing the Right Openings
In the final paragraph, the speaker advises players to analyze their statistics to understand their performance with different colors and opening repertoires. They stress the importance of not rushing to judgment about an opening's effectiveness and suggest a trial period of 5 to 10 games to assess its suitability. The speaker also discusses the importance of enjoying the positions one gets from the opening and the patience required to learn new openings effectively. They conclude by encouraging players to continue learning and adapting their strategies as they progress in skill level.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Chess Openings
💡London System
💡Stonewall Attack
💡Center Control
💡Rating Ladder
💡King's Indian Defense
💡Scandinavian Defense
💡Sicilian Defense
💡Vienna Gambit
💡Dutch Defense
💡E6 B6 Setup
Highlights
The London System is recommended for beginners with white pieces, starting with the queen's pawn and developing a solid position.
For beginners, the Stonewall Attack with e3 and f4 is another effective opening, focusing on central control and piece development.
Against e4, playing 2. Nf3 supports central control and is suitable for beginners looking to play principled chess.
The Fried Liver Attack is a tactical weapon for beginners, challenging opponents early in the game.
The King's Indian Defense is a safe and solid choice for black, avoiding early checkmate threats and controlling central space.
The Scandinavian Defense is a simple opening for beginners with black, involving early queen development and straightforward piece play.
The Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense is recommended for beginners, with a structure similar to the King's Indian Defense.
Intermediate players with white can experiment with gambits like the Danish Gambit or King's Gambit to create early initiatives.
The Vienna Gambit is particularly effective at the intermediate level, offering high win rates against e4 openings.
The Closed Sicilian with g3 is a positional opening for intermediate players, building up a strong attack on the opponent.
The Smith-Morra Gambit is a daring choice against the Sicilian Defense, sacrificing pawns for central control.
The Dutch Defense is a strategic option for black at the intermediate level, allowing for a pawn storm and central pressure.
Advanced players can use the Catalan Opening to apply long-term pressure with a solid and space-controlling setup.
The English Opening is suitable for advanced players, focusing on queen-side advancement and positional play.
Advanced players with black can use the Karpov's Defense to fight for the center and create a strong pawn structure.
The Nimzowitsch Variation of the Sicilian Defense is a tricky option for advanced players, disrupting the opponent's preparation.
The e6 b6 setup for black is recommended for higher-rated players, dealing with a lack of space effectively.
Tracking personal statistics is crucial for identifying strengths and weaknesses in one's opening repertoire.
Transcripts
before i was streaming and making youtube videos i was a chess teacher and over my
years i've probably taught openings to close to a thousand people in this video i'm going to share
what i think are the best openings to play to have success across the rating ladder for beginner is
probably up to about 1200 intermediates about 12 to 1800 and the advanced section of the video is
about 1800 plus of course if you like any of the openings that you see you are welcome more than
welcome to play them at whatever level you are these are just the ones that i think are the best
based on my experience so we're gonna kick things off with beginners and with the white pieces now
the opening that i think has the most success at a very early level is the london system so
that begins with the queen's pawn and then you go for a setup based on the dark squared bishop on f4
and then pawns on e3 and c3 and the knight to f3 and what you do is you add layers to
this you start learning more and more about the london system the point of this video is to just
get you thinking about the right opening why do i think this is the best because it follows
all the basic principles like fighting for the center but without any of the drawbacks
everything you develop is solid everything is defended your king is very safe which can be
different than playing kingspawn stuff because there's all sorts of tricks and traps and the
game plan in london as a beginner is honestly not that complicated uh i'm just playing you
know regular recreational moves that you might see with black uh when you have the white pieces and
the next step of the london is putting the knight on e5 and creating some sort of attack on the king
sometimes you castle sometimes you don't sometimes you castle the other way sometimes you create a
kingside pawn storm sometimes you break in the center but the game plan is very easy and your
position will look consistent every single game that you play another opening after d4
that you can try to go for as a beginner is the stone wall with e3 something like bishop d3
and then the move f4 and you go for the same thing except your dark squared bishop stays home
and the difference here is that this pawn is advanced what that means is in the future
you will have the open rook so in a perfect world you still get the knight to the center just like
in the london but in this version you also can go here with the rook so it's a bit more aggressive
it has a positional drawback in the sense that your central square here can be blocked and if
black is able to block it the position can get closed but those two openings with white have had
the most success over my years of teaching and if you go for e4 and you play principled stuff what i
would say is this uh play knight f3 on the second move against e5 but e5 doesn't have to happen
try to put a second pawn in the center if you can and if you can't because it will get taken
make sure you can at least take back with the knight if not the pawns c3 and d4 pawn c3 and then
pawn d4 is also very good uh you should definitely bring out the bishop uh this to me has had the
most success and now fried liver if possible check out the fried liver video if you haven't already
and maybe here you play c3 if you don't go for a fried liver so that you can take the center
i cannot stress enough how important it is to have two pawns in the center if you're a
beginner people will melt if you learn how to control the center with pawns or with pieces
and then push into your opponent's position once you castle and everything is ready to go
you will be very very happy and you will be able to win a lot of games honestly so that's
why i like london and stonewall because you lock the center you take control of it and then you
create an attack on your opponent and it's one of the reasons i like this c3d4 idea in the um
in the e45 positions or i mean fried liver right those of you that have watched the fried liver
video you probably understand the power of the fried liver at this level so be challenging to
your opponents within the first five or six moves and if you can't take control of the center with
what you can simple easy to understand openings and then we you know we kind of push the advantage
uh further that's with white though and i mean half of our games we're going to be playing
with the black pieces so we have to be gotham subscriber and they have to be the no-name noob
now to me i almost never taught students e4 e5 i hated the early queen attack the scholars mate i
didn't like the gambits so what i taught so many students at this level was the king's indian setup
which is d6 knight f6 you would be surprised how many people lose this pawn by the way
but let's say they protect it and then g6 bishop g7 and castles you avoid all four move checkmate
nonsense your king is safe you control some central space and then you develop all of your
pieces make this trade if you have to and then play knight c6 and slowly build up for pawn to e5
of course the middle game is difficult to navigate just in general in the king's indian but you make
it out of the opening alive and then after that if you play safely you play solidly you take free
pieces when they're available and that is how you build your experience you will climb up the
rating ladder the good thing about the king's indian is it doesn't matter what they play
if they play the london system you can still play the kings indian if they play whatever d4 c4 with
knight c3 you can still play the king's indian so you can play the king's indian setup against
anything but what if you don't want to what if you're bored another one that i like is
the scandinavian defense and you would say well why would you tell a beginner to get their queen
out early well my my what i told beginners was that well if your queen gets attacked
you have a choice move it all the way to the side or move it all the way back and this is actually
not such a waste of time if you move it all the way back your next few moves are extremely easy
pop out both knights put the bishop on f5 or g4 and the the reason why you have to do that
is uh let's just say bishop c4 castles why you have to bring out the bishop is so you can play
e6 and bring out the other bishop if you don't do that if you just go like this you block in
your bishop but development here is super simple development here is you don't have to think really
i mean you just play your pieces out and then you castle short or long sometimes i would tell people
to castle long to make the game more complicated but that that's that right like the scandinavian
defense is uh is a very simple opening to play and for a last one you can play the sicilian but
i would all limit it to one and one only sicilian and that is the dragon sicilian which plays
g6 and you'll notice the bishop on g7 just like in the king's indian defense and i would do this
because the structure is similar what does that mean it means that you play pawn d6 you bring out
the knights and then you castle so the structure looks very similar the sicilian dragon uh
the king's indian setup and maybe the scandinavian but scanned uh the king's indian and the london
at the beginner level uh are the two openings that i would uh prefer for you to play the most
now let's go back to the white pieces and we're entering intermediate territory so you're like
1100 1200 you're like how do i start beating everybody this is where it gets the most fun so
to me the most successful opening you can play an intermediate level after e4 first of all i
actually think e4 is great because now you're studying more openings so you're learning theory
you're learning the best moves you're using an openings database you're using a computer let's
say you're like 12 1300 1100 12 1300 now it's time to start going for the good stuff first of
all you've got your gambits you've got things like the danish gambit or the king's gambit where you
know that by sacrificing pawns early sometimes as many as giving away three pawns for capture
winning one back you can create initiatives and you can create targets of weak squares definitely
investigate gambits but the vienna oh it's just my favorite my goodness the vienna is just the best
go study the vienna i can almost guarantee that you will win like 70 of your games against e45
in a perfect world you play the vienna gambit hoping to overrun them in the center like this
in a another perfect world uh you get a copycat variation with bishop c5 and go queen g4 and go
for g7 so you're learning these kinds of systems and punishing people for playing into them
if you play into a sicilian a setup that i really like here is the closed sicilian
with knight c3 the point is that you go g3 kind of like a vienna but you build up with the pawns
and what that looks like way down the line is something like this potentially this knight
can go here here or here but what you do is you play h3 g4 f5 and you attack the opponent
that's what you do you slowly build up your position and you attack the opponent vienna
and close sicilian are fantastic not to mention against the sicilian there's another gambit
the vienna not the vienna the smith mora gambit like this or even something as crazy as the wing
gambit cb4 you take two pawns in the center and you're very happy i love e4 at the intermediate
level if you want to continue hitting everybody not with d3 but with the london system that's fine
you can consider incorporating this tricky move order against the uh king's indian defense which
is knight c3 and then castling queenside this wins a lot of games at the intermediate level uh so
consider incorporating that into your territory as well but definitely e4 and d4 still at
intermediate build on those fundamentals include like some sidelines of mainline openings like two
nights against the french or the advanced kara khan like e4 c6 d4 d5 pawn up to e5 for example
in the kara khan which is a very menacing system that takes space and puts pressure on the opponent
with black at the intermediate level things are also very fun this is where against e4 i highly
recommend you to learn the kara khan if you've made it this far and you're like 800 consider the
kara khan as a beginner the point is you fight for the center like this and all you got to learn here
is three things do they push do they take or do they protect their pawn that's it and all of them
have a very more or less straightforward game plan if you learn it there you go beautiful you now
know how to play against e4 and many players with the white pieces don't face a lot of car cons my
subscribers do but not everybody is a subscriber still some people are no name noobs uh against
d4 at this level c4 at this level and even knight f3 any move literally any move that's not e4 and
maybe g4 uh play the dutch so d4 play the dutch the dutch defense is a reverse sicilian defense
yes you temporarily weaken your king but what you do is you play knight f6 g6 bishop g7 and castle
and the position that you can get from the opening looks really nice it looks something
like this where you have the advancement of the f-pawn and slowly you will build for this e5 push
you'll play d6 you will play knight c6 or knight d7 and queen e8 sliding the queen over
to push the pawn into the center with e5 in a perfect world you will create the same pawn storm
that you would in the closed sicilian you remember you were watching earlier unless you skipped that
part go back to that part so the point of the dutch is to just i mean people play it less than
five percent of the time when they have the white pieces so they've got the white pieces you have
the dutch you played 100 of the time they play it five percent of the time who has the advantage
me because you're watching my video so queenie ain't trying to push e5 and it's all good i
love the dutch defense at this level and at this level you can also start incorporating
very tricky stuff like the traxxler of course i made a video on the traxler but the point
of an opening like the traxler is it's a it's not necessarily a great opening according to
grand master or engine games but it works right it works the problem is at a certain
level you'll stop having so much success another example and again the traxler is this
it's when you allow the fried liver but play this very dangerous bishop c5 again the point of this
open of the video is to point you in the right direction it's i can't give you everything here
but i'm trying to kind of stimulate the thought process uh as you climb the raiding ladder um
so knight c6 is an and then this whole thing would be the traxler um but uh there's other
things i mean you can play the stafford gambit eric rosen's favorite opening right dc6 and now
you've you've played a gambit you've given away a pawn but you know the aggressive tricky nature of
this opening and you can pick up some easy wins so hopefully that's good for the intermediate level
for the final part of this video we're talking about about you know 17 1800 plus at this point
you're quite a serious player you've really climbed the rating rank so what do you need to
push you to the next level so again with white i love e4 and now i mean you gotta be putting people
under pressure you can play the mainline positions but you're still not gonna have a degree of
mastery out of the game you've gotta be thinking about it from a confrontational standpoint
take people out of mainline theory vienna continues to be good but for example if you
want to go d4 knight f6 don't allow them to play a king's indian don't let them play a grunfeld
don't let them play a benoni trumpowski one of my favorites an opening that single-handedly
carried me over to master level territory i was winning like 80 of my games here after bishop
g5 the point is you're just gonna take and then you're gonna rebuild on the light on the dark
squares you've traded off your dark squared bishop so you'll play bishop g2 c4 and you just create a
nice and solid system uh if they play knight to e4 which is the main line you can play either bishop
back or the raptor variation which was it's a lot of fun the point is to open up this file for the
rook and you're already creating menacing threats like pawn g6 and they would have to take leaving
them with a very damaged structure trumpowski is fantastic at this level you can also consider
uh the catalan which will be probably the most solid opening you ever play knight to f3 and then
g3 bishop g2 and castle with c4 super solid no weaknesses long lasting pressure on your opponent
the catalan oh fantastic and at this level i will say that if you want to play in english
now is the time i haven't shown this opening yet but the point of the english is to play knight c3
play g3 play bishop g2 and you can play this bot vinix style which means d3 and e4 or you can play
e3 knight e2 and d4 and in the english you oftentimes try to advance on the queen side
it's a very long positional opening and it relies on your solidity and your long-term
strategic planning rather than crazy tactics in the first 10 or 15 moves
so the english is also good at this level to kind of push you over the top it's just going to be
hard because again it's it doesn't have a direct plan per se you just slowly improve your position
to try to make it you know kind of maximum now with black at the uh advanced level again kara
khan oh my goodness i cannot tell you enough how much i love it if you want to play e4 e5 what i
recommend at this level is in some of these like uh ruler passes or italians that you're gonna face
a lot uh i highly recommend you to play g6 systems so systems where you turn it maybe into a king's
indian or just go to throw your opponent off their game or play like a bird variation of a rue
lopez i mean the birds variation is very tricky again you'll have a hundred percent games here
and they will have five percent 10 max so you can play into the main lines of e4 e5
with when you're advanced but just try to play maybe a sideline of one of those openings because
you'll be familiar and they won't so like a g6 or a bishop g7 check out openings databases uh
and you will you will kind of know how to how to pick things up there and the last thing with black
at kind of this higher level is the trickier sicilians so not the dragon not the night or
necessarily but for example one of the trickiest sicilians is like the nim switch where you allow
e5 uh or you can play knight f3 uh knight c6 or let's say e6 d4 take take and you can play for
a two knight sicilian which is not a very not a very theoretical line uh and then you can play
bishop c5 bishop b4 there's sicilians where your queen comes out and pressures on this diagonal
so it's not a main main line sicilian but it's very tricky the pin variation there's a lot of uh
different sicilians which are non-like mainline sveshnikov what does magnus carlsen play
but just a little bit trickier so you can throw your opponent off their game
and then there's other things i mean there's for example at this level the e6 b6 setup and the e6
b6 setup you can play against really anything that white plays but i would recommend it here because
it has a little bit of a lack of space so at the higher level you'll be better suited to play this
because um you'll understand that dealing with a lack of space isn't so isn't so terrible now
i have an e6b6 course and uh what's interesting about my e6 v6 course is that i recommend it for
about 12 1300 plus and that's fine there's a lot of tricks to it but i think that
as you climb up the ladder and you're more comfortable dealing with a bit of a lack of space
you will probably have the most success i would say uh and i believe that's basically it uh i
mean e6 b6 is good the trickier sicilians the e4 e5 positions and really the question comes down to
how do i study this and how do i like make it work for myself well you have to go after this i want
all of you to do this go check your statistics i don't care what website you play on you will
be able to track how you do with white and how you do with black and that is the first step
to improvement do i lose more games with whiter with black and why what are my opening repertoires
where am i usually getting into trouble okay let me give this new one a shot but we have to
remember statistics can also be skewed because we could be getting good positions in the openings
and then losing or getting horrible positions in the openings and then beating our opponents on the
clock so you have to figure out if your opening is working for you and you're enjoying the position
it's a game by game process sometimes it takes a sample size of five to ten games to truly figure
it out but the learning curve for successfully learning a new opening can be 30 40 games and
not all of us have the patience for us for that right let's uh let's admit to that don't be so
quick to judge an opening you have to be playing it correctly before you can judge whether or not
you are actually having success with it hopefully this helps and i will see you in the next video
Voir Plus de Vidéos Connexes
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)