Newbie opening

Hi all,

maybe I didnt finalize my previous post, then I retry now.

I am an amateur of this game, in the sense that I did never do a deep study and didn't enter any chess club; I just played with some friends (and some of them are quite skilled).

Then, especially since I own a smartphone, I discovered the many ways to play online, which is slightly better for me, because I found that trying to play against a computer for me means:

1) if the PC skill is too high, I lose (or enter a lost position) in few moves

2) if I set the PC skill low, it starts moving almost randomly and then I don't enjoy playing with it

Playing with humans with a skill level like mine is much better because at least the moves are following a logic, and I can try to understand it, and at the end I think I can learn more from this (and enjoy surely more). 

This worl of online chess made me willing to improve my level as a chess player, or at least to learn the most typical blunders I do and how to look at a chess position in order to learn how to choose the move: not surely how to make the best move, but at least how to discover traps and avoid the most trivial errors one could do.

Now, in order to do such an improvement, the first suggestion I find everywhere is to play many games and then analyze them at the end. If possible, to do this with the opponent, but in the online chess rooms, it is difficult that the opponent stays there after the game has ended, in any case. 

About playing, a thing I always read is: learn tactics, exercise with problems, openings are the last topic to learn when studying chess. OK. Then I learned two simple openings but I can play always with them, for the first 2-3 moves, because I remember just these and not either all of their variants. The problem is then: what to do if I undergo some tricky move which is usually done to destroy all of the strategic bases of the openings I use? I don't know any other way to open a game, then I must "invent" the moves since the very beginning of the game. And: what to do if the opponent answers immediately with a move which is not in the line of the openings I know? And: what to do if I am Black and the White starts with something I don't know how to handle (I always start with e4, since all openings I read starting with the d4 pawn always get me confused, I don't know why). 

In other words: if opening is the last thing to learn when becoming a slightly-better-than-amateur chess player, how should a newbie manage the beginning of a game in order to have the possibility to reach the middlegame and practice with some tactics or strategy topics to apply?

Sorry if this is a silly question and cheers to all.

Not a silly question at all, but the pros have pretty much answered your questions in the CM courses on openings. Pity they removed the more advanced courses for free; guess they figured they were giving away too much for free, but what remains is pretty much crucial knowledge for a beginner.  Good luck!

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• | Jul 24, 2013 at 5:57 PM
• | Posted in: Perpetual Check: The Official Chess.com Blog
• | 165542 reads
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