WHAT ARE THE BEST OPENINGS AND HOW TO EXPLOIT YOUR OPPONENTS

Hey guys!

This is going to be a long post, but I dedicated much time to it, as the value it will give to you is inestimable.

When talking with amateurs, one of the common questions I often get is: What are the best openings?

A common question you can see in groups and in this forum, right? :)

At first glance, this question seems not that good, as there are so many opening in chess and if there was an exact answer to it, all the world top players would play only that one. However, if we simply add few words to this question, it will be transformed into a reasonable and very important one. Here are some examples:

What are the best openings for crushing x level (x could be 1000, 2000, or 2400)?
What are the best openings when playing against an aggressive opponent?
What are the best openings in those cases when the only result you must get is a win?
What are the best openings for my aggressive style?
Now the question is changed a lot, right? :)

I'll bring a simple example here. Let's assume you are playing against someone who just learnt to play chess. What do you think, what would be the best moves to crush your opponent very quickly if you play with white pieces?

Even if you always play 1.d4 or 1.c4, the right answer will be 1.e4 then 2.Bc4 3.Qh5 and then checkmate on the next move:). 80% of people get this checkmate when they have just learnt the moves! Can this work if you play against someone more experienced? Of course not :)

You can often see, that world’s top players play Reti opening (1.Nf3 2.g3...). What do you think, would they ever choose this opening if they play against 2000 ELO player?

No, they wouldn’t! They would play 1.e4 and would not let their opponent get even to the middlegame!

You can see in knockout tournaments, when world top players must win the game with black pieces, they don't play their usual Ruy Lopez variation. Why? Because there are many lines that finish with a draw there. But, with a draw, they will be knocked out. So what is the most popular 1st move against 1.e4 in such situation? Mostly it is something like 1...d6 1...g6 avoiding possible simplifications.

There are even best openings for open tournaments!

Quite often you can see, that some GMs usually play Queen’s Gambit against 1.d4, while in open tournaments, where they are one of the candidates to win, they go for Kings Indian or Modern Benoni. Yes, it’s a bit less solid opening than Queen’s Gambit, but here comes the golden word!

Attention!

Exploit!!!

What does 'exploit' mean?

Let’s look at the example of the game “Rock–Paper–Scissors”. The standard way to play this game would be trying to do all 3 shapes with 33% frequency.

However, would you play the same way if you notice that your opponent does “paper” more than other shapes? Obviously not! You would begin to do “scissors” more, right? However, you may notice, that in this case you also become exploitable, cuz your opponent can understand the sequence of your steps and may begin to do “rock” more. In the end, he will exploit you.

So, exploit is when you don't play your standard game, but begin to exploit your opponent.

The same is in chess!

When you play 1.e4 2.Bc4 3.Qh5, these are not the best moves, but still are an excellent way to exploit a beginner.

You can even exploit your opponent, who is well known for his very aggressive style by trying somewhere to change the queens, or vice versa, by trying to somehow get a sharp position, against an opponent with positional style.

In my opening repertoire, I have The Stonewall system (e6,f5,d5,c6) against 1.d4. I can't say that it is the best opening for black, but I'm 100 % sure that this is the best opening against the player, who hates positional play!

Remember about exploiting but be very careful! One of the common mistakes I see, is when I ask a very aggressive player, who always plays Sicilian and loves sharp positions, "Why did you choose 1...e5?". I get the answer "I chose it, because my opponent is a very aggressive player. I wanted to get him to such kind of position, where he is weak.”

Can you get where is the mistake? Yeah, logically he is right. He wants to exploit his opponent, but the thing here is that he also exploits himself! He is very strong in sharp positions, but just for exploiting his opponent he goes somewhere, where he is weak!

Now you can see how good it is to be a multistyle player and when it comes to exploiting your opponent, you feel comfortable in any kind of water and you have more space to exploit your opponent.

This is one of the main reasons why all the top players have different kinds of openings in their repertoire.

So, think about your opponent, his weaknesses, and how you are going to exploit him without exploiting yourself at the same time!

Coming up to the question "What are the best openings", you should specify it! Like, “who is your opponent”, “what is the tournament situation”, “is it a blitz game or standard”?

Okay?:)

I would love to see your thoughts, comments and questions if you have or just simply put + if now you understand better which openings to choose and how to exploit your opponents!

Cheers!

With best wishes,
International Grandmaster Avetik Grigoryan

Dear Grandmaster Avetik Grigoryan, I read your post with attention, but I beg to disagree.
"When you play 1.e4 2.Bc4 3.Qh5, these are not the best moves, but still are an excellent way to exploit a beginner."
No, if you play that way and the opponent falls for that, you get an easy point, but you have learnt nothing and your opponent basically neither. You must play well against beginners, otherwise they cannot learn to play well themselves. Against a beginner 1 a3, 2 d3 and 3 g3 will also be enough to win, but at least you have to think.

"What do you think, would they ever choose this opening if they play against 2000 ELO player?"
Yes they would. If they hope to beat a top grandmaster with it, then they surely are capable of beating a 2000 player with it.

"This is one of the main reasons why all the top players have different kinds of openings in their repertoire."
No, the main reason is database opening preparation. Players like Fischer, Kasparov played the same opening against everybody and on all occasions. Nowadays people look up games and prepare. I once in an open tournament played a very odd line that I played regularly, but nobody else did. My opponent played his strong moves in seconds: he had looked up my games in a database and then had prepared himself…

tpr you hardly beat your opponents because you have played 1.e4 2.Bc4 3.Qh5.

You beat them in spite of playing such moves. I could play the bong cloud vs players rated 1000 or so and still score very highly. A GM could do the same to me. Does that mean it's a good opening to play? Of course not.

The better (and far more interesting) question would be just how did you succeed to have GM added before your username, to thus confuse those reading your posts?

The main idea behind the post is just nonsense stuff. How to mate in 3 direct from the opening is very rarely playable haha. Some curiosity value. I'd be quite interested in how you actually managed to hack the system to add a non fact-checked GM tag to your own username, to add some credibility to whatsoever you do decide to post.

That possibility should be fully excluded in the Lichess code database asap, aka to allow just anyone to pretend to be a GM (with no actual games recorded on the site) and to offer nonsense advice (under this guise, of a fictitious title). Double deception here aka pretending to be a titled player and also pretending to offer spam stuff of how to win instantly at chess ( not possible). Bah!

@cp560 All he is saying is to exploit your opponent weaknesses, the scholar mate is merely an extreme example of one of those weaknesses, he probably is a GM.

Basically you have to adapt and go for the kill. If you know it'll work, you don't need to give to your opponent some annoying possibilities.

That makes sense but, really, it's only applicable if you're good enough to somehow understand your opponent intentions and put an end to it.

For instance how could a patzer, such as me, punish a aggressive player without exploiting myself in the process ?

I don't think people asking such questions are good enough to figure out a way to outplay their opponents whilst not playing at their best strength.

But sure if you know your style and weaknesses as well as your opponent style and weaknesses, exploit them.

@cp560

Let me ask you some questions

1) you are attacking Avetik and accusing him of faking a GM. Where is your proof?

2) Your whole logic falls completely apart because you failed to carefully read his post. The example was about WINNING QUICKLY vs a complete beginner. His proposed solution is clearly a strong candidate for the "best play given the target goal" and a great example.

Maybe you can enlighten us with a better explanation, why the scholar's mate example is flawed.

3) Only facts and logically sound conclusions should matter, no titles.

But being a 14xx player and immediately question the legitimacy of a gm (not even trying to understand the post!) is...something. Somewhat comparable to a middle school student running to a university lecture and shouting "fake news, fake prof" after 30 sec.

@tpr A gm won't learn anythimg vs a complete beginner no matter what opening is chosen. It was about a QUICK victory.

Kind of agree with you on the database thing (even though it's a blasphemy to assume players like Kasparov weren't preparing thouroughly prior to the database era)

Following up on this topic I want to ask
@Avetik_ChessMood a couple of questions as well

1) In your example with benoni/KI/pirc as a heavy favorite

Do you think the computers changed the frequency of those openings in this particular situations?

+ white has drawing or close-to drawing lines vs the solid openings
- the GMs probably had even bigger opening advantage vs amateurs prior to the engine era

2) The Reti/1.e4 example isn't completely clear to me. I've played some GM's as 1800-2200 player and didn't have the feeling of GM's changing their white opening repertoire too much (ofc completely different story with black as you correctly pointed out). They seemed pretty confident that their main weapon will suffice.

Can you maybe further explain the reasoning behind 1.e4? I get that black can play things like symmetrical grunfeld or catalan vs reti but what about all the ultrasolid lines after 1.e4 e5? And aren't lower rated players more comfortable vs 1.e4 (facing it a lot more compared to reti)?

Thx for the great thread opening btw.

@SnackYourPawn:

''But being a 14xx player and immediately question the legitimacy of a gm (not even trying to understand the post!) is...something. Somewhat comparable to a middle school student running to a university lecture and shouting "fake news, fake prof" after 30 sec.''
hahaha thank you for that moment. yeah, that guy has some issues, going straight for accusing someone of lying when the proof is easy to get:
ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=13302191

and you need to provide documents for having your title before your name, that can't be hacked by someone not being you.

anyway, back to the original post: i assume this is mainly about OTB tournaments because doing research on people just for some elo rating on lichess is a loss of time.
The ''What are the best openings'' question is actually a question often asked and always annoying to answer (i usually take the time to give a few 1e4 and 1d4 mainstream openings).
i don't even know what the best openings are for me, i play strategical 1d4/1c4 lines as white but play a mix of silician and french defense as black (usually in a really agressive and tactical way) which doesn't make much sense but are fun to play.
still, that's ''+'' for me:) i clearly don't prepare enough before my games.

@SnackYourPawn
"A gm won't learn anything vs a complete beginner no matter what opening is chosen. It was about a QUICK victory"
What is the point of a quick victory? You get no bonus points for winning quickly. You learn something from every game. Say one day in an open tournament you get paired with Magnus Carlsen. What opening will you play? I say: the same opening that you have played in all of your games before, against weak and against strong players, in slow games and in blitz games. That accumulated experience helps you to play your best possible game against Carlsen. You probably will lose, but not because of the opening.

The same for a grandmaster. If a grandmaster wants to win in say the Ruy Lopez Berlin Defence or an Italian Giuoco Pianissimo against a fellow grandmaster, then he should be able to defeat a 2300 rated player with it even if that is difficult and even if the opponent plays for a draw. Some other openings may be more suitable for a quick win against a 2300 player, but that is kind of lazy. By defeating a 2300 player from a drawish opening, the grandmaster learns something that will be useful when he faces his peers or even stronger.

My point about Fischer and Kasparov is, that they played a narrow repertoire and did not normally change openings. Fischer usually played the Sicilian Defence Najdorf Variation and the King's Indian Defence as black and the Ruy Lopez as white against everybody and in all time controls and during all his career. His opponents were free to prepare, they could not match his knowledge and experience.

That about different openings for a must win situation is not right either IMHO. There are famous examples (Lasker-Capablanca, Capablanca-Eliskases…) where the player that despartely needed a win choose a drawish opening and won.

Openings are overrated anyway. If you look at Carlsen playing 1 a3, 1 d4 b6, 1 e4 Nf6 2 e5 Ng8, 1 e4 Nc6 and so on, then it becomes clear that he judges openings not that important. Nakamura also plays weird stuff even 1 e4 e5 2 Qh5 in rated games.

White probably can play any of the 20 possible moves on move 1 and black can play most if not all of the 20 available answers on move 1. If you do not believe this, then pick any of the 400 combinations that you think is particularly bad and then play it against Stockfish 9.