10 Black "Opening Systems"

In this blog we will discuss 10 different opening systems for black:

The video explaining all of these different chess systems in practice. Check it out and let me know what you think 

One of my most popular blogs was from nearly 2 years ago. In that blog I discussed 10 different opening systems for white that you could play in your next chess game:

Link to that blog can be found here

With over 130,000 views on that blog, I am eternally thankful for the inordinate amount of attention to that simple post. However, I never released the obvious PART 2 to that blog. The long awaited sequel: "10 Black Opening Systems!" Like James Cameron's Terminator 2, will the sequel be as good as the first blog? Will this blog be like Jaws 2: The Revenge. In reality, this blog will most likely be somewhere in-between... Let's face it the White Opening System's blog is that good! 

There is a question that you may have at this point: Considering I released the video of this nearly 2 years ago, why did I never post the blog post to that video? Well I have no answer... Here is the blog on ten black opening systems. I should stress that I am not going to put too much detail into this blog around why you should play systems. If you are looking for that, I would suggest that you click the link to my blog above. Nevertheless, I should discuss whether black opening systems are just as good or not.

Can you even play systems as black?

The Short Answer is this: Ummm...Kind of...Sort of...Yessss... Butttt

Unlike white who gets the advantage of playing first and can therefore mostly decide the flow of the game by often placing one of his pawns into the centre, black sadly does not have that have luxury. It is therefore harder for black to able to get into a set formation of pieces without white potentially creating some disorder to his position.

A big potential DOWNSIDE to opening systems for black

As a result, sadly a lot of black's opening set-ups are, for a better turn of phrase, a little inferior. This is because in getting a set-up formation, like white's opening systems, they often need to avoid direct contact with white. This often means that they can be a little restricted in space compared to white who will often take black's timid development as an opportunity to take over the centre and seize some territory. Sadly this can often mean that if you are looking for chess openings with robust computer evaluations, you may not like what you see with black opening systems. However, if you like all of the other things from my first blog: 

1. Saving time on the clock

2. Reaching familiar positions that you are comfortable with 

3. Less memorization of specific move orders

 Then learning these openings may be useful for you to know.

An introduction to "hypermodern" chess

With a lot of the black systems that I am going to show you today, they will be often follow the principles of hypermodern chess. Despite it's name, the hypermodern school of chess was first introduced over 100 years ago. However, at the time, it was more modern than the classical school of chess which was first developed in the late 19th century. The ideas of the classical school are principles we still use today: control of the centre, developing towards the centre and king safety. The hypermodern school mostly follows the same school of thought. Development of pieces is still important. King Safety, that is important too. However, the main difference in these two schools of thought is the around control of the centre. The hydermodern school of thought argues in favour of controlling the centre through pieces rather than with pawns. A positional rule of thumb from Aron Nimzowitsch in his book, "My System" encapsulates this school of thought as the following mantra:

"First restrain, then blockade and finally destroy:"

Aron Nimzowitsch pictured here

If you decide to take any of these black opening systems into your next chess battle, you need to have these ideas at the heart of your play in order to be successful. Hypermodern chess is hard to play as you need to time your counter-play well. With this in mind, I wouldn't recommend it to beginners who may be reading this. It is better to stick to the classical schools of thought to begin with. Then you may wish to experiment with the interesting ideas contained in hypermodern chess.

The Ten Opening Systems: 

#1 A Colle/London System in reverse:

#4 1...e6 against everything