Best Opening

e4

End of thread. 

The best opening is the opening YOU win with more than with any other.

The right answer might be "one that you know much better than your opponent," but sometimes even that isn't the case.

The "best" opening is almost entirely a matter of personal style. Moving one of the center pawns is generally the best bet, especially for beginners. King's pawn openings (1. e4) may lead to more tactical play while queen's pawn openings (1. d4) may lead to slower games that emphasize strategy, but these are only general tendencies. As a beginner, you shouldn't be too worried about which openings to play. When the opponent doesn't make the moves in the book you'll be frustrated. You should concern yourself with--as many players much better than I have said--with the ideas behind the openings. 

1. Control the center.
2. Develop all your pieces.
   
3. Protect your king.

I'm not sure those are all the goals or that they are in the right order, as failing to do the third one will cost the game. Any opening that seeks to accomplish these goals is bound to be a good one.

One good opening for beginners to learn as white is the King's Indian Attack. The ideas behind it are pretty simple, and it is playable against just about anything black plays. A typical variation runs like this:

 White's same structure can usually be reached by transposition after starting with 1. e4 and 2. Nf3, and it is an effective way of facing a number of openings for black. Bobby Fischer used it against the French, the Caro-Kann, and the Sicilian and once called it his favorite opening. It has an opening that many grandmasters have used, but since it does not require memorizing a bunch of variations, it is great for beginners too. 

The KIA is (obviously) related to the King's Indian Defense, a solid choice for black against 1. d4. Against king's pawn openings as black, the overwhelming favorite (according to a recent chess.com poll among other sources) is the Sicilian (1. e4 c5). There is a lot to learn for that one, but it leads to fun games. Learning that and the English (1. c4), in addition to the King's Indian on both sides, would lead to a nice little repertoire of two openings for white and two for black that would more or less allow you to dictate which opening will be played in the game. The fact that these four openings are often two pairs of mirror images also cuts down on time spent studying variations leading to more time playing the game, which should be the real goal of the opening in the first place.

Sorry for the long post, and keep in mind that I am not that good and might have no idea what I am talking about. I am sure I am not saying anything new here though. This topic seems to come up a lot.  

The best opening is the one you understand better than your opponent :-).  There is nothing wrong with the Bird.  Or the Grob - or this or that.  If you know it better than your opponent. 

The best advice is to take a good look at the chess board and play a move and understand what you have done.  Play d4, and look at the good of it and the bad.  You can read every chess book known to man, but unless you have a grasp of the effect it has on the chess board, you will not understand the opening. 

Now play e4.  Look at it and understand it.  See what Black can do, and what you can do in return, and how it affects a few things:

#1 King safety

#2 Development of pieces

#3 Control of the center

#4 Pawn structure

Those themes may be hard to understand at first, but look at it this way:

Is my king safe?  Does he have any immediate threats?  If so, can I defend against them?  Do I have a threat that is stronger than my opponent's? 

You can open with any move, but remember that it affects you for the rest of the game.  A lot of people recommend opening with 1. e4 for a beginner, to learn tactics, so maybe you should start there.

There is no best opening. That is why there are so many. If e4, d4 or c4, etc. were labeled as best, nobody would play anything else because why not play the best.

My favorite sequence as black is when my opponent plays 1. g4, I respond with e5. Then if he protects the g-pawn with 2. f3 then I play Qh4#

Nice post. I have played c4 for the reasons stated as I play c5 in rersponse to e4. I ahve tried the KIA but I dont like yielding the center early which is why I play the Grunfeld instead of the KID. But as has been stated it is a matter of preference.

I think mny of the people on this forum don't get the point: Let me repeat what I have said many times (this is not an OPINION, it is logic, and unrefutable).

If white possesses a winning strategy in chess (only 1 percent or less of GM's believe this anymore, the range of drawish positions is just too big...) then there of course does not exist such thing like a best opening (provided you want to choose between two of them which do not lose!).

Most GM's believe that chess is a game which leads , assuming best play of both sides , to a draw in all variations. And moreover, that most openings are feasible to reach this goal (including PERHAPS some "rather passive" openings such as the Aljechin defense). 

The rest of the story is fashion, taste. 

 Nah, it's b4. 

 1. b4 ("Orang-Utan", or Sokolski opening). Aliechin once said that this opening is correct, but  it leaves black many DIFFERENT opportunities, since 1.b4 does not represent any immediate threat ...

In my opinion, Black has (at least) two options which give him a comfortable game (meaning white does not get even a "more active" position ).

I)

1.b4 e5, 2.Bb2 B:b4, 3.B:e5 Nf6, 4.e3 0-0, 5.Nf3 d5,

6.c4 Be7!, 7.c:d5 N:d5, 8.Be2 c5!, 9.0-0 Nc6, 10.Bb2 Bf6!

White's center and the "dreambishop b2" are neutralized, in an endgame the black pawn majority on the queenside could become nasty... This plan is due to A. Adorjan. 

II)

Black plays a Kings-Indian attack setup (with reversed colours!) , where one of two moves b2-b4, or Bc1-b2,  might turn out as superfluous... For instance:

1.b4 e5, 2.Bb2 d6, 3.e3 Nf6, 4.Nf3 g6, 5.c4 Bg7, 6.Nc3 Nd7, 7.0-0 0-0, 8.d4 e4, 9.Nd2  Re8, and then,

as Fischer showed us  - with reversed colours, though -   

h7-h5, Nf8, Bf5, N8-h7, etc.,  with attack against the white king. 

III)

Other moves/plans are also perfectly playable, for instance

1.b4 c6, or 1.b4 d5, or even 1.b4 a5. 

The statistics on the above mentioned website (losses/wins/draws) for all first moves is very interesting. It shows that in open openings (starting with 1.e4) draws are "less probable" than in closed ones.

It does however, not show any significant advantage for 1. e4, compared to 1.d4 or 1.c4.

Moreover, the last line even suggests that 1.Na3 (39 percent wins for white, compared to 34 percent wins with 1.e4 !!!) might be the "best" opening. This is of course only due to the surprise effect, and it proves  that EVERY statistics has its limitation: it matters WHO and HOW they are playing.    

 I usually delay Bb2 by playing b5 first. It hamstrings blacks knight and they usually are forced to respond to the incursion into their territory before I am able to build up a space advantage on that side of the board. I haven't played a game yet where I faced a pawn storm such as you mention.

 Why would you move to f4? Tell me. Please, tell me. Look:

But no you move to f4 and only allow your king to move one square. All the other pieces can move to the exact same squares after f4. Onewho_dies said that it attacks a central square. So does e4 or d4 but it attacks a central square and ocupies one. :(:(:(

Again of im missing something please tell me because to me f3 is the worst move and f4 is second worse.  It even says that f4 sucks in many books so onewho_dies please tell me what is good about it, anyone please.

And if i'm right than stop inserting comments on my forums onewho_dies or stop putting stupid answers. It really ticks me off. If anyone wants to see what onewho_dies wrote it's the fifth or so comment from the top on the first page of this forum.

Thank You for reading and please comment. thanks :):):) 

The best opening? I don't know, but the best ending is King+Queen vs. King. One does not win the game in the opening. But it's true that, statistically, some openings lead to better results than others.

Let 's do the following experience: follow the link www.chess.com/explorer and take a look on the main first moves for white. This database is built based on master level games. Open an electronic spreadsheet and input the win / draw / loss percentage. In a fourth column input the formula (win*1+draw*1/2+loss*0)/100. This result will be the average score of that opening, and obviously the bigger the score, the best should be the opening.

 The scores for the six most common white's first move are:

1. e4:  0.53345

1. d4:  0.54910

1. Nf3: 0.55385

1. c4: 0.54585

1. g3: 0.54675

1. f4: 0.47780

The best score goes for 1. Nf3, but that's a very flexible first move, since it often leads to transpositions of other openings. The second best would be 1. d4, which, by the way, is also the most victorious opening for white, since playing 1. d4 white wins 39.49 % of its game - though 1. e4 is close, it wins 39.48 % and only scores so low because it also loses a lot.

But talking about losing a lot, 1. f4, the Bird's Opening, that some people are trying to defend, is a major loser, it scores a ridiculous 0.47780; that means white loses more than wins playing this opening! Indeed, the game explorer shows white wins only 35.54 % of games that start with 1. f4 whilst it loses 39.97 %. Observe that in no other opening white manages to win as much as 39.97 %, as I mentioned, white's most victorious move among the main ones is 1. d4, which leads to only 39.49 % of victories  (if we consider all moves, 1. Na3 wins more than 60 %, but there are only 23 games starting this way in the database, it's a too small sample to be considered relevant) so, yes, Bird's opening is quite a good opening... for black!

The same method teaches us that the most victorious defense for black against 1. e4 is the Sicilian (easy) and against 1. d4 it's the Indian.