A Few Thoughts About Openings

At my level most players' opening repertoires consist of: 1.) Playing either 1. e4 or 1. d4; 2.) A defense against 1. e4; and 3.) A defense against 1. d4. It's always bothered me that it seems like Black has more influence over the choice of opening than White. White can decide whether the game opens with 1. d4 or 1. e4 (or something else, but almost always one of those two), but after that it's actually Black who determines what opening gets played. If I'm a 1. e4 player, Black can respond with 1. ... e5, 1. .... c5, 1. ... c6, 1. ... e6, 1. ... d5 or even something like 1. ... Nf6 or 1. ... g6 and I have to be prepared to deal with all of them.

As White you almost never know what openings your opponent likes to play as Black, and you can't possibly be expected to know as much as your opponent about all of those possible openings. He only has to know about the one he actually plays, and you don't know what that is. He can get away with knowing precisely nothing about how to play the Caro-Kann, say, because he doesn't play that opening; he plays the Sicilian. As White, you don't know that and have to know what you're going to do if he does play the Caro-Kann. If you're playing White, almost no matter which move you open with you're going to be playing Black's preferred opening.

To be sure, some of this is simply due to the conventions surrounding the naming of the openings. Double king pawn openings that begin with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 are considered separate openings: the Ruy Lopez, the Scotch, the Petroff , the Italian--the list goes on--but if we wanted to we could just call all those openings the Double King's Pawn and consider the different ways the game could go from there to be variations rather than separate openings. But the point stands.

Some would maintain that this is all the more reason that weaker players shouldn't memorize openings at all and should just learn opening principles. Develop your pieces, control the center, get castled and then figure it out from there and you should be all right. This advice is well-intentioned, and I agree with it up to a point. There's no reason to memorize 12 moves of theory in a bunch of different openings and all their variations. Even if you could do so, if you don't understand any of the reasons behind all those moves inevitably your opponent will play something that you haven't memorized and then you're back to square one. You do have to rely on basic opening principles sometimes. The problem is, if that's all you know you'll get bad positions a lot because you're playing against players who actually know a little bit of theory in their preferred openings.

For some openings knowing nothing more than opening principles is fine; for instance if I open 1. e4 and Black plays the Scandinavian, 1. ... d5, or the Modern, 1. ... g6, then I'll rely on opening principles rather than prepare by learning all the intricacies of those two openings. But for many of the most common defenses to 1. e4 I like to learn something about the theory of at least one variation, even if it's just the first couple of moves. For the French Defense maybe I'll learn the first few moves of the Winawer; for the Ruy Lopez, the Exchange Variation; for the Caro-Kann, the Tal continuation of the Advance Variation. Or whatever. Just as long as I feel like I have some sort of idea what I'm going to play when I see Black's defense to 1. e4.

Of course there are always a few openings that we know fairly well, either because they are already part of our opening repertoire or they used to be. That doesn't mean that I necessarily play those openings well, but at least if you have some experience you have some idea what you're trying to achieve. It's one of the few instances where being older means you have a bit of an advantage. For instance while I may not play the Ruy Lopez regularly now, when I was in my twenties it was my favorite opening, so while I'm no expert at least I remember some of the ideas behind what both sides are trying to do. That's just an example; actually I do play the Ruy Lopez and enjoy playing it with either color.

One of the reasons some players like to play somewhat less popular openings is because most of their opponents will know very little or none of the theory. If I don't know the recommended moves against Alekhine's Defense as White, I have to rely on general opening principles if my opponent happens to play that opening. But it would be foolish if I knew in advance that I was going to be playing an opponent who always plays Alekhine's Defense, yet never bothered to even look at the first couple of moves of the main lines and decide which one I would feel comfortable playing. Players who play offbeat openings often get many of their good results because of the surprise value of their opening choice; if you can take that away from them you have the upper hand, particularly since less common openings are usually less common because they're not as good.

If all of this is a bit much to think about, the good news is that at this level you will rarely lose a game because of inferior opening play. It's possible to lose because of making an out-and-out blunder in the opening, sure, but that's different. If you don't play the opening well, you might have a worse position going into the middlegame, but it's not a big deal. People win games from inferior and even losing positions out of the opening all the time. Play a better middlegame and most likely you'll win no matter how poorly you may have played the opening. Of course it's a bit easier to play a better middlegame if you have a better position out of the opening, and I'm not suggesting that playing well in the opening won't help to some extent. Play an opening that allows you to play a good middlegame; that's all you really want or need.