Profit from opening mistakes- 1

Amateur chess players are told to not spend too much time on openings, but it can be very practical to try to profit from opening mistakes from your opponents. This can be great fun and have some short games as result.

Some amateurs chess players have developed their own opening pet lines, sometimes with really obscure moves, which can surprise the opponent, and can be hard to deal with it, especially when there's not much time to think as in blitz games.

At the same time, when we analyse our chess games, we can develop our own cook book of opening tricks and good moves, and counter these off-beat opening lines !

Here's a short example what I came across today, winning with black in 8 moves (!) :

Another one, winning in 8 moves ... as white :

Another one finished in 8 moves, with black :

Now, let's look at some home-brew opening line from an opponent, and see where the weaknesses in the position occur :

One more game where white had a won position after 10 moves :

Conclusion :

Especially if you are a tactical attacking chess player, it makes sense to me to work on your opening play.

A few years ago a Fide Master chess friend urged me to start to play 1.e4 as white because I feel like a happy fish in the water in tactical positions. At first I didn't really like to give up on 1.d4 since I played that for many years, but I tried 1.e4 and kept working on my 1.e4 opening lines, and the results are still improving, while there's enough fun games played as well !