Aggressive openings for the under 1450?

Is it wise to be playing the fried liver attack and the evans gambit or kings gambit if you are a player under 1450???

What I find when playing the evans gambit or fried liver is that I am kind of hoping that the opponent may not know the lines as well as me and thus get the upper hand but find that if they do know well how to defend against these, maintaining the initiative gets harder and harder and I then find myself down in material.

Should I go for more solid positional play such as d3 against the 2 knights defense vs the italian game???

Any ideas would be much apprieciated.

Thanks

yes, I would recommend to play in open, tactical games like the Evans Gambit. at the 1450 level even if you lose you learn 10 times more than any mordern opening.

If you want to learn other agressive opening lines, check out "Starting out: Attacking play" which is a really good book. Also, you can try playing some of the c4/c5 f4/f5 openings as well as they are geared toward counterattacking from the opening. Ideas like the Smith-Morra Gambit in the Sicilian, some of the English opening systems, the Dutch Defense, Bird's Opening, the king's Indian openings that white can employ and perhaps even learning some of the more respectable lines in the Philidor, Petroff and Scnadinavian Openings. As far as the Kings gambit, play around with it on both sides, learning gambits like the Cochrane, Muzio and Kierzertky Variations. Sure you may lose a lot of games, but you will learn tactics and even some surprise weapons to use on people. Once you get serious with wanting to jump up to the next level of chess, you can learn positional play and other aspects.

Also, for every attacking line there is a defending line as well and if your opponent is attacking while you are, you need to know when to go to ramming speed and when to respond to a threat. that's what makes attacks in chess so fun.

in this level and even in higher levels blunders are decisive and you probably lose because of them, not for relative weakness of an opening. tactical openings teach a lot and  are the best choice for a beginner. you can turn to more solid games later.

Agreed

When I was 1450 rated, all my tries of aggresive play were ending with disaster. So I had decided to do 1. Nf3 ... 2. g3 ... 3. Bg2 ... 4. 0-0 ... all the time. This was my opening, the rest was tactics and strategies that was found on the spot Hope it helps.

Hi, I published an article here dealing exactly with this topic and the approach to openings in general. I think you can find some guidence there

Perhaps if you are playing aggressive opennings and loosing then its an indicator you are a positional type player and you'd be better off sticking to a positional type of openning.

First of all, I disagree with people who say you shouldn't study openings at all below 1XXX whatever rating.

I had a huge weakness in the opening phase of the game, which, once I spent maybe 5-10 hours going through openings, I started winning a LOT more. I stopped falling for traps (mostly), wasted a lot less time on openings, and got myself into a playable middle game where I could take advantage of my strongest point in chess: strategy.

If you can't get out of the opening, or you spend too much time pondering opening moves, then you're that much further behind when the middle game arrives. Yeah, studying tactics 80% of the time is important, but that doesn't make some basic opening study unimportant.

That said, I choose not to play fried liver/lolli above 1200 level at ALL, especially since I plan on building on my knowledge and understanding to become a better chess player. It is a gimmick opening and fun against newbies, but that's it, and that's where it ends... same goes for most "trap/hyperattack openings." As a ~1500 OTB player, I feel like I can shut down almost any gimmick opening 95% of the time just by paying attention and using solid principles of defense... then the other player is almost inevitably in a worse position. And since they usually would expect to win in the opening essentially, they probably aren't comfortable with their position and how to play it out from there.

Don't study at all.... Wing it... What could possibly go wrong?

Thankyou very much for all the comments people

study tactics, i youre bent on openings play 1.e4 and 1..e5 and 1..d4 as black, theyre the most important to learn.

Dont try any modern/hypermodern openings like the sicilian or the kings indian, they have a lot o memorization which will not help you at you level. 

What is said about studying the openings is to do so aiming to improve grasp on principles rather than simply to learn move orders by rote.

Of course someone preparing for a world title shot is not doing that but for most of us an understanding of what makes a particular move strong or weak is a whole lot more important than learning the names for particular sequences of moves.

I agree that it is a mistake to invest a whole lot of time and energy in the opening.  When my opponent deviates from what I was expecting I spend a moment or two looking at how the overall balance of play has shifted but I expect to make my next move fairly quickly whether I push on with the moves I originally had in mind or decide to shift towards a new course because of his deviation.  I only start taking significant amounts of time if I think my opponent has made a clear error.

King's Gambit or the Scotch Gambit.

this is fair enough, but 'aggressive openings' usually need much more accurate moves to avoid being worse in their sharp lines. Accurate moves must be memorized, and memorisation is a waste of time below id say 1600, at which point having a few sharp lines can help.

I'm in the 1400-1450 and most of my repertoire consists on stuff like the Fried Liver, the Evans, the Halloween, the Traxler, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, the Albin Countergambit, the Calabrese countergambit, the Latvian Gambit and other "agressive but maybe unsound at high level" stuff. I think they're great to improve your tactics, but from time to time I prefer to play something quieter.

Go to 365chess.com and register for their service (free). There, you can learn some different openings to practice that may help you in your game play.

As far as some good openings to learn here are a couple that I use that help when I play chess IRL.

1. e4 e5 (1... c5) 2. Nf3 Nc6 (or any 2nd move Sicilian replies like 2... d6, 2... e6 etc.) 3. d3 Nf6 (3... Nc6) 4. g3, 5. Bg2, 6. 0-0. this is the King's indian Attack and can be set up against a lot of Black systems and does not need a lot of theory to be memorized to play. Here are some of the positions you can get in the first 4-5 moves.

Now, how would you handle the move order 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6? Here are a couple interesting ways:

And what about 1. e5 d5? If Black plays 2. ... Qxd5 you have these options to play with.

While not comprehensive, these are at least some fun lines that can be made into agressive weapons. The move orders might be a bit off but experiment with them and see what you can come up with that fits your play.

On your second diagram against the philador defence, I find taking back the bishop with the g pawn is interesting but is this not a mistake???

Or is it fine to double the pawns on the f file???

Is it really true ????

Maybe I will try it, because I suck so hard in openings. Despite the fact of learning so much lines (and forgetting them).