Daily Chess - Do you really need to play main lines?

Based on my games from 3rd round of 2025 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship

Good morning chess players!

Another round completed, but this time let's talk about the openings!

First move? How to start a game?

Even in Daily Chess, where everyone can use opening books and databases, you don’t always have to play the main lines. Starting with e4 or d4 (and sometimes c4 or Nf3) is not a rule. In fact, it is often not the best choice in Daily Chess. Your opponent also has access to opening books , and when both sides play the main lines, many games go straight into quiet endgames. Then it is hard to get anything more than a draw.

That is why in Daily Chess it can be good to try less popular openings. In those lines you can still be creative, because not everything is already deeply analyzed. Often the theory ends after only 5 moves, and the rest is up to you.

Playing standard or blitz games I nearly always start with 1. d4. It was similar in the previous Daily Chess Championship editions, where almost always my first move was the queen’s pawn.

But in round 3 of this edition I changed my mind. The reason was exactly as I wrote above. When I played the main and popular lines, with White I often got very boring positions without any chances. That is why I decided to experiment with different openings.

Below you can see how I did. As it happened, after 1.d4 I won all my games. But this is, as usual, just the exception that proves the rule.

1. b4

So let’s start with the best one, 1.b4. According to chess.com this is the Polish Opening. In my childhood I often used this opening, beating at the World Championship in Bratislava the future vice world champion under 10. Back then this opening was most often called the Orangutan Gambit.

Both names fit 1.b4 very well :

Here is my game with some tricks:

1. Nc3

If White starts with a knight move, it is almost always 1.Nf3. But you can also jump in a different way and begin from the queen’s side with 1.Nc3. I myself have played probably around a hundred OTB games starting like this, including some in classical chess. The only minus of this move is that it blocks the c2-pawn. More than once I had to move the knight back so the c2-pawn could go to c4, which also opens the queen’s diagonal from d1 to a4. Apart from that, it is all positive. The move is very flexible.

• After Black plays 1...e5, we can continue with e4 and later maybe f4. But we can also bring out the other knight to f3 and then play d4. I will show these continuations shortly with my games from the championship.

• It is similar after another popular reply from Black, 1...d5. You can play the calm way with 2.d4 and then Bf4. But you can also go aggressive with 2.e4 d4 3.Ne2 e5 4.f4, with many crazy lines that you have to invent on your own.

1. e3

For someone who plays the French Defense or the Nimzo-Indian Defense with Black, the move 1.e3 with White can feel like a natural choice. After 1…e5 2.e4 we reach the French Defense. After 1…d5, White can play 2.c4 right away, or wait with 2.Nf3 and only later go for c4.

In short, 1.e3 is a way of playing White as if you were choosing openings that you normally play with Black.

Here the first example of the game which unfortunately I lost:

But the next game I won:

That’s all the games from round 3 where I used unusual openings. In the other games I started more classically with 1.e4 or 1.d4. Even though I lost 3 games and drew 4, the group was quite balanced, and only because of that I managed to advance. It’s not often that you can win a group with 17 points out of 22.

Now I’m waiting for the other groups to finish, and soon it will be round 4. I can already say that there won’t be much room for Classical Openings anymore. At least half of my games, maybe more, I will begin with 1.b4.

So get ready for more Polish Openings — or, if you prefer, Orangutan Gambits.