Atomic Openings Every Player Should Know About

Introduction

Atomic openings are crucial. If you mess up in the opening, the midgame and or the endgame might not even happen. In this blog I'll be going over some of the best common atomic openings to learn and some less known but useful openings. I'll try to briefly cover the basics, hopefully I will address most of the openings.

Common 2 Knights Opening

This opening is pretty common if you are a 2 Knights player (spammer) or you are black trying not to lose. This opening has been popular with Stockfish for a while now and it doesn't seem like it's gonna go away for a while. However, one of the most annoying lines in my opinion is the line where white takes the pawn opening up the board:

Playing as black can be very difficult. This opening is very tricky to defend and one wrong move and the game is completely over. Example:

However there are plenty of scams as black especially if you go off the main line. If you know your opponent is good as white, probably go off the main line and hope for a scam because they should know all the theory. Doesn't mean white instantly wins any of these games. In 3+1 beating this opening can be difficult because of all the time white gets. The best advice I can give you especially in faster time controls is, make your opponent uncomfortable. Play a line they do not expect or know how to play. This increases the chances of them blundering or running out of time in the endgame. Another Example:

Overall this is the "best line" and it is definitely recommended to play or to know some defense against it.

2 Knights Without Black Nh6 Defense

So I'm just gonna cover the line I play because the other line where you play e4 instead of e3 is kinda boring and not as fun (in my personal opinion.)

The Super Annoying e3 Opening

So in this blog I'm going to briefly cover the black defenses and white's choices in this opening. Playing this opening gives both black and white fighting opportunities and choices on what opening to play. Firstly we have the classic e3,e6 Nf3 opening.

https://lichess.org/study/PXTG5KhP/AxJxOSev

In my opinion this is the most solid choice for white however black does have some scam attempts. Black has several choices to defend against this opening, the best choices are probably f6 / f5 / Qf6. In this blog we will focus on Qf6 cause I'm too lazy to provide all the lines. This is the standard response as black and usually white wins this. Following the recommended Stockfish line we get to this position:

so I don't rly feel like writing more so here's the link to my study. i'm getting close to being done

https://lichess.org/study/PXTG5KhP/YRZRv1Kl/

Thx all