Learning the Opening: The Spanish!

Learning openings is one of the most dangerous things one can do in chess! 

Many novices learn a few tricks and traps and get hooked on learning openings. But the problem is that chess is much more than a few opening zingers and players quickly learn ways to avoid the most common traps and to set up their own traps.

When novices who only study openings reach a plateau they often decide their opening is the reason they aren’t winning as much as they would like, so they switch openings.

BUT, we should still learn something about the opening!

We have already learned the goals of every good opening:

• Control the center

• Develop the pieces democratically toward the center

• Protect the King, usually by castling

• try to keep your opponent from achieving the same goals!

We have learned that the f2/f7 squares are weak, and some ways to attack on the e-file.

Now it’s time to learn a specific opening!

Probably the single best opening to learn is the Spanish. It is known as “The Queen of Openings”, and was made famous by the Spanish priest Ruy Lopez de Segura who lived only about 50 years from 1530 to 1580.