Advantages to playing many different openings?

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Musikamole

Many say that it's best to stick with one opening. What about the opposite, playing many different openings?

I played the Sicilian Dragon for the first time and found myself confronted with a new set of problems, i.e., activating my c8 - bishop, defending a fianchetto castled king, White attempting to crash through with h4-h5, etc.

The new set of problems made the game more fun, if you can call more problems a fun thing. What do you think about this approach?


Murgen

If you enjoy it more then it's a good approach for you.

Even if a player only plays as White and limited themselves to one opening move... alot of very different games can be played.

If you stick to one opening you will get to know it well, but your oponents won't always let you play it.

If you play many different openings you will get to see lots of different things happening - if you can absorb them it should make you stronger.

I think it's a matter of finding a balance.

EvgeniyZh

I think that until you can play an opening without really knowing it (I'm pretty sure that it's at least 1800, maybe 2000) it's much more fun to try different things, though you'll get somewhat worse results.

At higher level you can't play an opening without knowing it art all, but there is still narrow vs. wide opening repertory question. Like you can play the minimum - only one answer for each opponent opportunity and perfect it, or have a bit wider choice - like 2 or 3 different openings to use.