Chess Openings

tennison gambit forever

are you referring to lines that don't include cxd5 and e4? lines with e3 and stuff like the petrosian?

@Str0n6h0LD

My first look for things like this is to always quickly check Arturs Nieksans' Boot Camp series. Unfortunately Grunfled Defence isn't on there. I did however find that there are a few Chessbase India live streams so that might be a good option for some free videos on it.

Another useful source can be the lichess player database as a means of working out what theory is more useful than others by making a note of moves that people play regularly enough to ensure you don't leave major gaps and don't waste too much time on very rare sidelines.

On the Grunfeld being an intermediate level opening, I've always heard it as more of a expert level opening (which is due to the large amount of theory needed) this might make it difficult to find alot of free resources that are sufficiently in depth and cover everything. You might have to do some searching and add a few bits and pieces together from a few different places.

I don't know how deep into theory you want to go, @Str0n6h0LD. I'll get us started with the Russian Variation:

Since you're learning this for Black, I chose this orientation for the diagrams. Next, I'll show one game in the popular 11...Re8 move. This one happened in Titled Tuesday, and Jeffery Xiong (@jefferyx) had the black pieces:

The game features a sacrifice I found quite interesting.

@Str0n6h0LD

we can always play again where i am white. i know all those lines

Hey know any black defenses? Besides Karo Kahn and Dutch?

I personally really like the sicilian defense, after that we still have the French defense, the Pirc defense, Berlin defense, im sure theres more, but these are the main ones, the Scandinavian defense is up there too

@nathanielo241 There are many defenses. The two you mentioned, Caro-Kann and Dutch, are for different first moves by White (and the two first moves you should focus on at first). Most players start with 1.e4, and then you have a few options, such as the ones mentioned here:

1.d4 is relatively rare among beginners, but here I give you a few replies you can try when you face it:

@nathanelo241. The moves provided by @KiriyamaKazuo are a great point for getting started.

The critical things to work out will be what sort of game do you want to play and then build openings around that for all of White's likely moves in those structures.

This isn't a quick process and one you can mess about with over time. You can also look for openings that create similar structures for familiarity or openings that create very different structures to ensure your games have more variety.

The French Defense is an interesting alternative to the Caro-Kann

if you didn't like the caro kann then you will HATE the french. e5 is hard to learn but i think switching made me a better chess player

i dont like the caro kann but i do like french

strange opinion

It all comes down to whether you like French or Caro positions better.

they're the same, except in the french your bishop is blocked, meaning the french is objectively worse than the caro kann lol

if i learned the any caro kann theory i could probably play it but i never took the time to do that and the french is fine for me

Objectively is a very strong word here!

The openings are very similar in terms of quality its more that the caro kann is easier to play at a beginner level but it only scores slightly better (but only around 1%). At higher levels it evens out. In fact, at master level the French scores better!

From this I'd say that the caro is probably slightly preferable to learn at beginner levels. That said you can get similar positions from them so it might not hurt having experience with both openings, especially at levels where opening theory is not going to be followed.

Every opening has its strengths and weaknesses so it will always be a trade off, the weakness of the French is very obvious with the "French Bishop" but minimising the weakness and maximising the strengths is a skill in itself.

Been a while since we had much discussion of openings on here so thought I'd share my ever evolving journey on approaching 2... Nc6 in the open scilian.

This has long been a pain for me and I've struggled to find something that I enjoy playing. After some more searching I stumbled across a rather interesting gambit idea using Bc4. As an Italian player an opportunity to play the Bishop here is a rather nice opportunity.

The key aim is to leave Black with double isolated pawns. There's a couple of lines that do this and I'll show these below.

The other interesting line.

This preparation came in nicely for the first round of the new marathon tournament with quite a nice win based off taking advantage of the weak c pawns.

Does anyone else have any interesting and unusual gambit lines they like to play? Especially those that aren't completely losing against best play like this one.

Well I want to learn how to Play The Caro Can