Openings for White I Hate Playing Against The Most
Hello, everyone!
I would like to start off with a question: Have you got a favourite opening? It's very natural to have one! There is no right or wrong answer to this question: it might just be more comfortable for you to play certain openings. This might be because you've studied it, or it fits your style ... whatever.
In this blog post, I would like to talk about the opposite: openings that I don't like playing against the most. This is when I play the black pieces, and I might one day do another blog post about the openings I hate playing against the most when I am White. I will give a bit of background knowledge and then why I detest the given opening.
As we all know, White moves first, so, much of the time, they get to decide which opening you play. I will not talk about two openings that I hate for the same reason, to get things a little more interesting.
Openings that you don't enjoy playing against can lead you out of your comfort zone, which has happened to me quite a bit with openings I don't quite enjoy.
So, what are the pitfalls, boiling buckets of tar and arrowslits of chess that can be used against Black? Just don't use these openings to get on my nerves after reading this post. Let's go!
3. Sicilian Defence: Open, Dragon Variation
Aaaaah. Every beginner's worst nightmare. This is a common line in the Italian Game, after both players develop their pieces quite normally.
Quite often, beginners use this opening against each other, in the hope that their opponent does not know of a trap in this opening.
Yes, there is a trap in this opening, and it is one of the most popular ones ever. EVER. This is because countering it is incredibly hard, and beginners commonly fall for this trap. In fact, the Fried Liver (the name of the trap) is one of the most used traps ever.
But I'm not here to talk about this trap, I'm here to talk about why this is one of my least favourite openings to play against. If you would like to learn about it, you can click here. Let's see why I hate the Knight Attack, then.
Why the Knight Attack?
So, why do I hate the Knight Attack? With a rating of at least 1000 in every time control, I think it's safe to say that I have progressed beyond the rank of beginner. So why is it that I hate this opening? Surely, an intermediate-level player like me would be able to stop the trap?
The thing is, I can stop this opening. In fact, as soon as you paste this opening into the Analysis feature on Chess.com, it simply shows you how to stop it.
But there's a problem. The engine is guided by artificial intelligence, not a human. This might be a little hard to understand, but Stockfish might find a challenging position easy to draw, even while down material.
Obviously, human players like us won't find it easy, because we can't play perfectly and we'll think that we're losing when we're down material. We're not all world champions, and we find it hard.
And that's why the Knight Attack hurts. Stockfish's suggested way of stopping the pitfall you can easily fall into loses a pawn straight up. Here it is.
This is why I hate playing against the Knight Attack: it's simply too hard to keep my cool when down a pawn, and you have to play quite perfectly after that to get a draw. The reason I hate the Knight Attack isn't because I can't stop the Fried Liver - it's that I find it very uncomfortable to play on afterward.
Solution? I play the Giuoco Piano Game during the Italian Game. No big deal. Period. Let's move on.
This one might come as a bit of a surprise, but I do not at all enjoy playing the King's Indian Defence as Black. While it is a very popular opening among intermediate-level players and grandmasters alike, it is simply not a preferred opening for me.
The King's Indian Defence is actually one of the most popular openings among grandmasters these days. The engine also agrees with it, saying that both sides have chances. It is not that it is hopeless for Black to play.
So why do I hate playing Black in the King's Indian Defence? Let's find out!
Why the King's Indian Defence?
Why do I hate playing against the King's Indian Defence, then? If it's good enough for Magnus, Nakamura, or Caruana, it should be good enough for me, right?
Well, here comes the same solution as in the Knight Attack. While professionals seem to be able to counter the King's Indian easily, I can't. This is because you simply give up too much space. White has three pawns in the centre and has a lot of control. Sure, they can't attack yet, but that's not the point.
This opening can be very stressful for Black, since squares are limited. To show what I mean, here is the position in move 6 in the King's Indian.
Obviously, you would not want to play as Black in that previous position. This opening can be very challenging for White - if you ask for my opinion, I say not to use it until you have reached a decent ... hm, let's say 1500. Though it can still be hard then.
But how can we counter it? Well, I do so simply by not getting into the King's Indian Defence at all. Instead, you can play a Nimzo-Indian. Here is the Nimzo-Indian for reference.
So yeah, a second opening that Stockfish says is alright, but is hard to play for humans. For me, at least. I get that you can easily transfer into a playable middlegame with the King's Indian, but it's just not a fav in my book, because of how squashed Black's pieces are. You can probably do something to it, but even after pushing in the centre, I feel White has too much control.
But that's just my opinion. Let's move on.
Sicilian Defence: Open, Dragon Variation
The Sicilian Dragon is easily one of the most important lines in the already solid Sicilian Defence. Instead of striking in the centre at once with the unblocked e-pawn, it slowly builds up to a future push. Because, in this variation, the d6 pawn is blocking Black's dark-squared bishop, fianchettoing it is a very creative and resourceful approach, and it works.
As you can clearly see, the Sicilian Dragon does not at all give up any space in the centre, and the e-pawn can still clearly push to e5. So what is it that I hate about this opening?
There are no opening traps, there is no tightness, no pieces are trapped in ... so what's so bad about it? Let's find out!
Why The Sicilian Dragon?
The truth about why I hate this opening actually lies in the fact that there are no traps, no nothing. This will be a huge shock, I am sure, but the real reason I hate the Sicilian Dragon is because it is too complicated. Winning in this opening relies heavily on positional play, which I am not very good at.
You see, after developing your pieces in this opening, there is practically nothing to do. You can strike in the centre with the e-pawn, sure, but White has d5 controlled so you cannot make that push.
Usually, White has to attack first in the Sicilian Dragon, but when my opponent doesn't do that, it is just so irritating. White enjoys lots of space while I have nothing to do. That is absolute torture. I will still escape with a draw, perhaps, but the point of chess is to have fun, and the Sicilian Dragon doesn't give me fun.
So, how to be free of this boredom? Well, don't forget that it is Black that decides to play the Sicilian Dragon. After playing this opening several times and discovering it wasn't for me, I simply never played it again. Thank God!
Surprisingly, this is quite a bad opening for White, giving up a pawn straight in the opening. I have not studied the King's Gambit, so I do not know, but I think, in some lines, White just has to play on without a pawn.
Before the Queen's Gambit became popular, it was the King's Gambit that was the most popular gambit. Played a lot by players in olden times, it didn't seem faulty until modern chess advanced.
Okay, I know what you're thinking ...
But if this opening is bad for White, you dummy, how can you possibly say a word against it on Black's side?
You
Well, I've got a solution to that. Let's find out why I hate this opening that is actually beneficial for Black.
Why the King's Gambit?
This will probably be one of the most ridiculous reasons for hating an opening that you could possibly have. The reason I hate the King's Gambit isn't because the position is uncomfortable to play, isn't because Stockfish is so relaxed while we are alarmed ...
It's simply because the King's Gambit is a very offbeat opening and quite hard to play against. It gives a pawn straight up, but creates complications straight away. Of course, if you know what to do it'll be a piece o' cake, but if you don't, that's when it gets hard.
You see, in most openings, you can keep developing. Even if you don't know opening principles, you can just develop your pieces normally, and usually, everything will be fine.
The King's Gambit is different. If you develop like normal as Black, White can easily dominate by trading their f-pawn for your strong e-pawn. However, I am also unsure about taking the free pawn as White gets centre. For this opening, I think you need to study it to understand it.
Allow me to show what I mean by the fact that you can't just develop normally when your opponent plays this gambit.
I hope I made that clear. So, in conclusion, the reason I hate the King's Gambit is because you have to really study it to know how to stop it. It is a very unorthodox opening as the f-pawn isn't usually pushed so early. Therefore, Black is forced to not play normally as well, and this isn't good.
So how do I stop this? Well, most of the time, I usually just play the Sicilian Defence, but when I do respond the first move with 1...e5, it's basically all up to chance.
Well, that's basically it! My most hated openings when I'm playing the black pieces! I apologise for only four openings, but I ran out of time to submit for a competition and I sort of had to rush in this conclusion.
Therefore, I have collected a few other openings that I do not enjoy playing against and will list them here. Thanks, @VOB96, for the amazing conclusion in your blog Knights of the Desert: Middle East and North Africa Chess Titans, which inspired me to write this conclusion.
Let's start:
- The Bishop's Opening, which still reminds me of my beginner days getting tortured by the four-move checkmate.
- The French Defence: Advance Variation, for squeezing my position so much that my pieces can barely develop well.
- The Caro-Kann Defence: Advance Variation, for the same reason listed above.
- The Scandinavian Defence, for aggressively attacking and refusing to allow me any opening traps that I had just learned and was ready to use.
Well, that's about it! I hope you had fun reading my opinions - I certainly think that they are a little different to other people's (everyone is different of course).
That'll be it for today. Thanks for reading this post, as always, and I hope to see you next time!Back to Table of Contents
