#20 I more-or-less agree with this in general, but having looked at the @LadAarav 's games they seem to play the opening very sensibly already - centre, development, king safety, all very proper, so in this case I'd agree with others that their time would probably be better spent elsewhere.
i play fried liver the most aggressive and sharp opening in chess
@greysensei said in #20:
> I feel like some basic opening knowledge helps give a person confidence to start the middle game. Otherwise you can be quickly overwhelmed by the complexity of chess. I
Not my experience. On the contrary, studying variations is overwhelming. As long as you know and follow opening principles (and maybe a few traps which you're gonna learn on the fly) you will come out of the opening fine almost always at that level. I've "coached" a total beginner (starting with the rules) and what I saw was 19/20 games a decent opening without any memorized lines. Then came the 1-move-blunders, on both sides. No amount of chessable study would have helped there.
Time is limited. The benefit of doing tactics and learning basic principles is many times larger than that of grinding mainlines.
> I feel like some basic opening knowledge helps give a person confidence to start the middle game. Otherwise you can be quickly overwhelmed by the complexity of chess. I
Not my experience. On the contrary, studying variations is overwhelming. As long as you know and follow opening principles (and maybe a few traps which you're gonna learn on the fly) you will come out of the opening fine almost always at that level. I've "coached" a total beginner (starting with the rules) and what I saw was 19/20 games a decent opening without any memorized lines. Then came the 1-move-blunders, on both sides. No amount of chessable study would have helped there.
Time is limited. The benefit of doing tactics and learning basic principles is many times larger than that of grinding mainlines.
#23 FWIW, my opinion that it's good for beginners to look at some openings is based on the idea that "looking at openings" and "learning basic principles" should be more-or-less the same thing. You play through the first six or eight moves of the main line of the Giuoco Piano or the QGD or the Goring Gambit or whatever and see how each side's moves contribute to central control, development and king safety. If you understand the principles then the moves should probably just stick, if you don't understand the principles then looking at the moves might help. Talking about grinding variations on chessable is a bit of a strawman in this situation.
<Comment deleted by user>
Réti
Sicilian as White
@MieszkoTheFirst said in #23:
> Time is limited. The benefit of doing tactics and learning basic principles is many times larger than that of grinding mainlines.
I agree with you that most of the time should be spent on tactics and puzzles. I just think that for a beginner, investing 1-2 days and learning a few openings that you will always play helps, rather than not having any opening knowledge at all.
> Time is limited. The benefit of doing tactics and learning basic principles is many times larger than that of grinding mainlines.
I agree with you that most of the time should be spent on tactics and puzzles. I just think that for a beginner, investing 1-2 days and learning a few openings that you will always play helps, rather than not having any opening knowledge at all.
@guillage said in #6:
> 1. c4, the english. Almost nobody plays it but it's generally considered to be on par with e4 and d4.
I like this but you have to be prepared for 1 ... E5 too
> 1. c4, the english. Almost nobody plays it but it's generally considered to be on par with e4 and d4.
I like this but you have to be prepared for 1 ... E5 too
Queens gambit if d4 and nimzo indian to
This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.