Hey,
I wonder if there is a rule of thumb of which openings one should try before settling to an opening repertoire. And how deep should I go when "trying out new" openings. Somehow I feel that I need have a general knowledge of most of the openings, before deciding which one should my main weapon.
I mainly play the Italian game, the Grand Prix attack, the Petrov Defense and the Slav Defense. And I know a little bit about the Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, London System and Queens Gambit.
So my question is, if it is crucial to "try out" the English Opening, French Defense, Caro-Kann, etc..., before committing to a repertoire or starting to build a repertoire immediately and then gradually increase my knowledge about other openings as a byproduct of studying/playing/watching chess?
I feel that there is an infinite amount of opening theory and I don't know how to set the scope and what I can leave out for now?
Would be really grateful for your advise :-)
You should check out the book Fundamental Chess Openings by Paul van der Sterren. It gives a basic idea and the themes of almost all the major openings. Just give it a quick read and pick the openings which suit your style. You don't need to try out all the openings. Master the openings which suit your style of play and which you can comfortably play.
Many moons ago, when I sat down to construct my opening repertoire I asked the same question. I decided that I didn't want to commit too much time to an opening I might not end up playing. So, what I did was take a cursory glance at positions from various openings starting around move 10. If I liked the position I saw I'd decide to play it. If I had more than one I'd look through some sample games and get a feel for which positions I liked more than others.
Eventually as I wanted to climb the rating ladder I had to have a knowledge of lots of different positions, so I began looking at openings outside of my repertoire. I studied games that featured openings I didn't play and it helped me to improve the ones I do play.
TL;DR: Nail down a solid repertoire first and increase knowledge of others later
I don't think it is necessary or beneficial to spend too much time learning too many different openings. Arguably, at your rating level, especially playing on fairly slow time controls, it's more important just to know opening principles and how to develop properly rather than learning some complicated lines. If you really want to work on openings, I would aim for things that are fairly general and will give you a decent position against the most common lines of your preferred opening. Then maybe at a look at the common trappy lines (e.g. Budapest gambit for d4) where you really basically just need to know one or two move orders to safely navigate them. I wouldn't worry about trying to, say, memorize a tonne of Ruy Lopez theory unless your rating is well north of 2000.
I try to be an opening minimalist as much as possible. I play d4 as White, and have maybe 10 lines at 5-6 move deep that I know pretty well, and pretty much anything else I just fudge it from there and if I end up down a half pawn or something it's not the end of the world. For Black I have Scandi against e4 which requires minimal theoretical knowledge, and QGD vs. d4 or Reti. I don't have a great line against c4, but it's usually not to hard to convince the opponent to transpose from a c4 line into a QGD.
Whatever opening(s) you decide to go with, I would try to stick with them for at least like 2-3 months at very minimum. Often people will pick up an opening, play a handful of games, lose most of them, and then decide that opening is bad and try something different. This is really unproductive because you never spend enough time with any one opening to be even competent with it. Of course when you are doing a new opening you're going to lose a bunch. The strength of your opponents hasn't changed, but you've moved to something that you're less familiar/comfortable with and have, temporarily, reduced your strength as a result. You'll lose for a bit, then you'll gain your footing and your rating will come back.
I respectfully disagree with LaserGuy. I think I've improved a lot as a player by studying a lot of different openings because in a lot of openings you can obtain an advantage by transposing to a favorable version of a different opening. Take this line of the Sicilian for example: 1.e4 c5 2.f4 d5 3.e5? People who have studied the French or Caro will instantly realize that they can play a version of the structure in the advance French/Caro where their light square bishop is not locked inside the pawn chain and they don't even have to give up a tempo for it! However if you only study the Sicilian and haven't looked into any other defenses to 1e4 then you might be uncomfortable after whites terrible third move because you'll be in a structure you're unfamiliar with.
Play those openings you hate to play against. See what happens.
I'd imagine the better you get at chess, the easier it becomes to learn a new opening. You don't need to "settle" on or "commit to" an opening repertoire: the repertoire is just what you play. Focusing on a narrow repertoire that covers the common moves of your opponents is recommended because it frees up time to study other aspects of chess, and lets you go deeper into the lines that you play. But having openings besides your main three (your Italian, Russian and Slav) in your repertoire just gives you additional options, in case your opponents are researching you or you know they play something you'd like to avoid, and you could make heavier use of those changeup options until they become your main weapons, if you like the games you get with them. It's just going to be exponentially more work if you try to study multiple mutually exclusive options in meticulous detail.
One of the nice things about the Giuoco Pianissimo, which you play, is that there's a lot of positional ideas that can also pop up in other openings like the London and Ruy Lopez. There's the knight going from b1-d2-f1-g3, there's the bishop retreating to c2, there's the d4 and f4 pawn breaks. I'm not sure you can play this opening strongly without building up your general chess understanding at the same time. The other nice thing is that you won't get it every game, so there'll be variety in your games even before then.
What you play at the moment is fine. If you find another opening calling to you, no reason not to try it out. Don't try to plan out in advance where your study will take you and where you'll end up.
Try things out, play everything. Then through experience you will find ones you like. Nothing beats trying thing out in game.
Try em all out, SF or casual, I would recommend, and find one you like. It is not crucial to know tons of openings, unless maybe when you are over 2000 rating, so you do not need to learn all. Just find a few you like, and stick with them. The more you play a single opening, the more you get familiar to it and you can discover techniques available only to which few openings you prefer.
I can try.
