The Réti Opening: A Solid choice for Beginner & Intermediate players

The Réti opening is a very solid choice for Beginner and Intermediates. It was originally known as "The Zukertort Opening" which was named after Johannes Zukertort. The 'Zukertort' opening is now simply known as the 'Réti' opening.

Now let's take a look at the move sequences:
It's originally called the 'Zukertort' opening

And here's the original 'Réti; opening:

As you can see, they used to be a different opening back then.

This opening's main idea is to control the center with the knight by playing 1.Nf3 instead of usual 1.e4/1.d4. The 'Réti' opening is a little bit slower than king's pawn and queen's pawn game in terms of development but it surely does it's job. It usually takes 1-2 or more moves to fully develop the pieces. If you want a fast development with the 'Réti' opening, I'd  suggest you to play the following move sequences:

1.Nf3 d5

2.d4 (Blocking the d4 pawn from advancing & opening c1-h6 diagonal for our bishop) Bf5

3.Bf4 (Developing the bishop) Nc6,

4. a3, here you can play obviously play 4.Nc3. But be careful about the Nxc2+ fork if your opponent plays Nc6!

If your opponent plays any other openings, you can simply play the same moves but with different order.

If you're careful enough, you can definitely win with Réti opening. Just like all other openings, there's also a variety of traps in the Réti opening which you can try. I'll cover those up in another blog.

Now let's give you all some puzzles about Réti opening:

Puzzle 1:

Puzzle 2:

Thanks for reading! Good bye