I'm a physics guy, and one of my favorite things about it is that you can derive everything from basic principles. There is no memorization of equations, you simply figure everything out right then and there. I want to know if this same idea can be applied to opening theory. A lot of people talk about having to memorize opening moves and whatnot, but those opening moves had to come from somewhere. Surely someone must've figured out which move was the best, and I want to know how to do that so I can figure out these moves on the board without having to memorize everything. Obviously, I won't have to have to best move, but it would be nice to be able to derive everything without memorize anything. How do I go about doing this?
You don't have to memorise opening moves. You have to understand the objectives of your moves.
The main things you're evaluating any chess position on are: material and local force, king safety, activity/mobility and amount of control or influence exerted over the board, space, time/initiative, and the pawn structure (which determines weak points, outposts, potential breaks, area of the board to play on, and so forth).
Every move that you're making should contribute to your strategy of improving those aspects, take away from your opponent's ability to do so, or to convert one advantage into another type to gain a winning position. As the position changes on the board, you have to adjust your strategy accordingly. You need to pay attention to the safety of your pieces, of your opponent's, and of the squares that are key to your strategy.
There's a number of general opening principles. A short summary of these rules is:
1. Get your pawns and pieces to control the center of the board quickly.
2. Ensure that your King is safe, usually by castling.
3. Complete your development before moving pieces or pawns twice or starting an attack, unless reacting to a concrete tactic.
4. Move your pieces and pawns to their best squares in one move if possible and try to gain time by making actual threats that your opponent must respond to. The best squares are generally the ones where you control more squares, are unobstructed, and exert influence into your opponent’s position.
5. Avoid exchanges or sacrifices in the opening, unless you have a concrete reason for doing so (such as gaining a lead in development or time). Don't force your opponent to develop by capturing.
6. Generally you develop first with a central pawn or two, then knights, then bishops, and your queen and rooks are the last to develop since it is difficult to know which squares they are best on and you don't want them being chased around by less valuable pieces.
7. If you're ahead in development, consider opening lines for your better pieces. If you're behind, then don't open anything up until you catch up.
8. Plan your pawn breaks ahead of time. Don’t lock up pawns just for the sake of gaining space if you won’t be able to convert that into an attacking advantage. Think about where good outpost squares might be for you pieces or where you can blockade your opponent’s pawns with your pieces.
9. Pay attention to piece safety and tactics. Take your time to evaluate the position and calculate any concrete tactics that you might spot for either you OR your opponent.
As an interesting note - Capablanca was known to not have studied opening theory. He just played chess from the first move, and was able to refute his opponent's based purely on positional and tactical understanding of the game as a whole.
I don't think it's as clear cut (at least I see a lot of comments like 'that's an engine move' or 'AlphaZero likes to do this but we're not really sure why') just because there are so many branching possibilities on the board. It seems like theory develops out of demonstration: top players showing that ideas not previously considered are actually playable.
But in physics too, in practice you are typically making use of known theory rather than, say, developing calculus from scratch to explain kinematics (though one could say the latter is possible). And in any established chess opening there are understood reasons behind the moves, right?
#1
Opening theory comes from experience. "Theory, that is me" - Korchnoi. From a billion human and engine games people have recorded what works and what does not work and that is it.
AlphaZero reinvented human theory like the Berlin Defence just by playing 700000 games against itself.
There are some basic principles.
Principle 1: is king safety. If the king is lost, all is lost. A king is safer in the corner than in the center. So castling is important. The pawns protect their king their as a barrier, so avoid weakening these with moves like h3 or f3.
Principle 2: the importance of the center. A knight in the square c3-f3-f6-c6 controls 8 squares, a knight on the rim 3-4 squares, in the edge 2 squares.
Principle 3: is time or development. If you bring pieces into play and your opponent hops around with pieces then you gain a lead in development that can serve as a basis for attack.
Principle 4: bishops are worth more than knights
From these and other principles and concepts, the mathematicians Steinitz and Lasker formulated 4 common sense rules
1) play your d- and e-pawns only
2) play your knights before your bishops
3) do not play the same piece twice
4) do not pin knights with bishops
All of these common sense rules have exceptions, but if you stick to these, then you get through the opening without trouble. You do not need to memorize anything at all.
Two major principles; piece range/mobility, and piece safety (with extra emphasis on safety of the king). You want to maximize your mobility and defenses while minimizing your opponent's. The good openings strike a balance between them, while leaning into one or the other.
Everything else is based in those. Controlling the center is important because it allows the most mobility for your pieces. Piece values are based on the piece's mobility (and ability to defend each other when talking two-for-one trades.) Castling is powerful because it mobilizes the rook while defending the king in the same move.
I agree to what @Mezmer and @tpr said but that’s more like an algorithm than what the post of @FallenSpectre implies. I think that @FallenSpectre thinks about fundamental principles like symmetries in physics. If that is true then here are some thoughts of the top of my head.
Getting inspiration from stastical physics where we can can calculate all the motion of each particle in a gas but that becomes rather impractical, so we only focus on some key macroscopic observables like pressure, temperature or volume. In chess we can do the same by computing the trajectory of each piece but such calculations are prohibitively huge, instead we can look for some “macroscopic observables”, like in statistical physics These could be time, space and piece connectivity or harmony (if you are an artist) or entropy (if you are physicist).
So we are interested in minimize time , like the brachystochronous problem in physics. Then we want in minimum time to maximise space such that our pieces coordinate/connect well. In this way we avoid to accumulate too much space which of course will increase the likelihood to have well coordinated pieces but we burn too much time.
Based on these three principles we can derive all the others “rules”. For example, the rule of controlling of the center, this is the optimal space which can be occupied in minimum time in order to achieve the best piece coordination, ie protect the king or transfer FAST pieces from one side of the board to the other.
look at the games of the masters
esp Tal and Fischer
they should give you alot of insights into opening theory
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