The Chess Opening Dilemma - What to Play?♟

I often read on forums that players of different skill levels inquire about the best opening or which opening they should play. My students also frequently pose this question to me, so I thought of examining this issue from various aspects in the form of a short blog post.

• What is the best opening?

It is important to emphasize that there is no such thing as the best opening! Opening theory is constantly changing and evolving. Just consider the openings played by Morphy, later Capablanca, Tal, Kasparov, or Carlsen. We will hardly find much overlap in their opening repertoires, even though each of them was a dominant player of their era. I won't delve into the reasons behind the changes in opening theory in this post, but I believe it is satisfactory evidence that there is no such thing as the best opening. A more accurate term would be the currently most fashionable, but it is worth considering that what is currently fashionable may be rarely played 20 years from now. It may sound like a cliché, but I believe that the "best" opening is the one we enjoy playing the most and with the greatest confidence.

• Is a certain opening playable?

This is also an interesting proposition – whether certain openings are playable. There is no exact answer to this, but it is certain that playable openings are not limited to the most fashionable variations played by top grandmasters. As mentioned earlier, openings rotate, with one opening coming to the forefront while another recedes. Therefore, I would not determine the playability of an opening based on its current popularity. One of my favorite examples is the Pirc/Modern Defense, which cannot be considered the favorite weapon of today's top grandmasters, and modern computers evaluate it as favoring white. However, it was once the primary weapon of players like Zurab Azmaiparashvili, who defeated strong opponents such as Karpov, Anand, or Kortschnoj with it. I believe that, computer evaluations aside, if it was playable against such players back then, we can confidently include it in our repertoire. One tip I would add here is to check the opening in a database, and if top grandmasters play it in classical games, then we have nothing to fear.

• So, which opening should I choose in the end?

In this case as well, it's better to speak in general terms. If you are curious about the criteria and specific openings I usually recommend to my students, then subscribe to my free newsletter, where I will delve into this topic in detail in the near future! In the meantime, the first and most important advice, unless we are professional or livelihood chess players, is to choose an opening that brings us the most joy! If there is a bit more to it and you want to aim for competitive achievements, up to the grandmaster level, I think almost anything is playable. Of course, within reasonable limits!

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