A Simple Opening Thinking Method
Stop wasting moves.
I see the same mistake in almost every game below 2000: players make moves that look useful, but very often they slow down their opening progress.
In this video, I explain a simple method I use with adult improvers to help them make better opening decisions without memorizing long lines.
The Goal
Develop all your pieces as quickly as possible.
If you have more active pieces on the board than your opponent, tactical opportunities will appear more often for you, and you increase your chances of winning material during the game.
The Method
Development points.
After Black’s move, we count the active pieces for both sides. The player with more active pieces usually has a better chance to take the initiative.
How do we gain development points?
- Castling
- Knight, Bishop, Queen leave the back rank
- The rooks are no longer blocked by their pawns
Exceptions
- Center
Having a stronger presence in the center often compensates for being slightly behind in development.
- Opening Theory
Sometimes, in high-level games, you will see players delay development or break opening principles very early.
These openings can be playable, but they are usually much harder to handle. They are not automatically better just because strong players use them. In many cases, those players know the exact move order and the concrete response to every critical move from the opponent.
So for most improving players, it is usually safer to first understand the basic opening principles before trying to copy these more advanced systems.
Free Lesson for Adult Improvers
If this was useful, I also made a free lesson for adult chess players where I explain why many players stay stuck even after watching a lot of chess content — and what to do instead.
You can watch it here:
https://www.imchessbrain.com/start
Thanks for reading.
