Any recommended openings for 650-750? (My rating range right now)
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Right now as a 703 rapid, 832 daily, and 518 blitz, I play caro-kann against king pawn, king’s Indian setup as white (or against queen pawn as black,) and london system. Is there any recommendations? And am I studying too many openings?
Scotch is a nice opening
you're studying too many openings... try to learn and understand opening principles, learn basic checkmating patterns and basic endgames... also study a little bit of tactics and how to convert material advantage into wins... mostly important stop hanging pieces and giving them away for free....
I recommend 1.e4 as white... and e5 as black (unless opponent plays 1.d4 in which you should reply with d5... but caro-kann and kings indian are both fine as well... so is the london, as long as you're not blindly playing the first 7-8 over and over again without thinking
Until you are a master, your opening repertoire is tactics, your middlegame strategy is tactics, and your endgame technique is tactics.
Jan 1, 2022
0
#5
Diagnose first:
https://www.chess.com/article/view/whats-your-chess-personality
Tell us what you got, then we'll tailor an opening repertoire for you.
Besides the test, please tell what You think your chess personality is. tests aren't perfect.
And, if you decided to answer me, then either message me, or write to me here using a quote of my post, because otherwise I just won't see it. If you quote, I get a message, if not - I don't get.
your opening picks depends on what kind of player you are, solid, aggressive, etc.
Your definitely studying a lot more openings than I was at your level (I think I studied precisely one opening). I literally didn't know what the London System was until a few months ago, lol. Maybe that's why I was 500 for so long and why I'm just 1500... I agree that the Scotch is great and you will probably get it in a lot of games (unless 600s have started playing something else in the past few years). I find that even 1500s don't know how to play it and will get into an awful position (which I somehow still manage to lose...).
Also, I agree that tactics are probably more important that openings (and also, just taking hanging pieces and not hanging pieces, which I should really start doing).
xRose_UnicornGirlx wrote:
Is there any recommendations? And am I studying too many openings?
Depending what you mean by "studying". I think it's helpful to look at the first 4-5 moves in an opening to understand how you can apply the opening principles, but learning opening lines is a waste of time.
If you like the build-up of the Caro-Kann, you might want to look at the Slav defence against 1. d4. They're quite similar from the idea and can transpose to each other.
You could give the Queen's Gambit or the Ruy Lopez a chance as well, or the Italian game.
However, no opening will give you the guarantee ending up in the middle game with a winning position, there's no shortcut to that. It's only when your opponent makes a mistake which you can exploit tactically that you gain the upper hand.
So in short, there's no preferable opening but only the tip that you follow the opening principles to get into the middle game with a fighting chance. And to look out if your opponent deviates from those and to exploit possible mistakes.