Board with your open? Try this!
I played variations on King pawn opens for darn near 10 years... And probably got my rating to about to about a 1200 standard fide and under a 1000 blits ( 3 Minute games ) think like 900ish. I also got board as hell. Now before I started playing with this open I just set out try different things against live opponenets online. I tried various queen pawn combinations but I didn't find a spark, I didn' see anything I liked. The I played the C1 Pawn as white the bishop pawn to C3. This was something! Mostly and regardless barring the obvious I would play the queen to C2. You would not beleive how may people of respectable ratings would pin a knight to the king for the queen to slide up to F5 checking the king and winning the knight. I found countless variations to play from here! I was estatic and the game was bright and new. I looked up the combinations of moves and realized I was playing various manifestations of the " Saragosa open" I easily added 50 to a 100 points of ratings within about 3 months. Now I know thats not just the new open. It has to do something with looking at more of the board by not stagnating in an open creating different combinations to quantify and break down. But It's a pretty cool open and aggresive and effective. I find it very powerful in 3 minute games. And also notice that it takes great advantage of people rooted and cemented in a center board open... think king pawn or queen pawn. I took the following from wikipedia:
The Saragosa open.
This opening became popular in the Saragossa chess club (Zaragoza, Spain) in 1919. The next year club member José Juncosa analyzed the opening in Revista del Club Argentino.[1] In 1922 a theme tournament requiring the players to open with 1.c3 was arranged in Mannheim with three participants, Siegbert Tarrasch, Paul Leonhardt and Jacques Mieses, which Tarrasch won.The opening of 1.c3 seems at first to be an unambitious move. It opens a diagonal for the queen, but it makes only a timid claim to the center. It prepares to play d4, but White could simply have played that move immediately. Also, the pawn on c3 has the apparent disadvantage of taking the c3-square away from the knight.
It is not a terrible move, however, because it is likely to transpose to many solid systems, including a reversed Caro-Kann Defence or Slav Defense (but with an extra tempo for White); the Exchange Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined, after 1.c3 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.cxd4 d5; to a solid but passive type of Queen's Pawn Game after 1.c3 Nf6 2.d4 or 1.c3 d5 2.d4; or to a reversed Scandinavian Defense after 1.c3 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Qxd4!? Nc6 4.Qa4; as well as the Ponziani and Center Game openings, to name just a few.
Black has a number of responses, the most common (and effective) being 1...d5, 1...e5, and 1...Nf6. After 1...d5, White can essay the Plano Gambit, 2.e4?!, in effect an unusual response to the Scandinavian Defense. After 2...dxe4, 3.Qa4+ recovers the pawn, but Black gets quick development with 3...Nc6 4.Qxe4 Nf6 5.Qc2 e5. Also reasonable is 1...f5, when 2.d4 transposes to a Dutch Defense where White has played the passive move c3.
The reply 1...c5 is also playable, but gives White more opportunity than other moves to transpose to standard openings where he may have a small advantage. The move 1...c5 2.e4 transposes to the Alapin Variation of the Sicilian Defence. The sequence 1...c5 2.d4 is also possible, when 2...cxd4 (2...e6 3.e4 d5, transposing to a French Defence after 4.e5 or 4.exd5, is also possible) 3.cxd4 d5 transposes to a regular Exchange Variation of the Slav Defense (usually reached by 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.cxd5 cxd5), which gives White a slight advantage. The move 1...Nc6 is also possible, as it transposes to the 1.Nc3 system (with colors reversed), where Black embarked on a rather dubious plan with c6 and d5. After 2.d4 d5, Black seems to be holding the admittedly unusual position without particular difficulties. In Lay Man's Terms this sh*t rocks.
