How to counter aggressive opening play from my opponents?

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soothsayer8

When I start a game, I like to focus on developing my pieces quickly and sensibly, and castling before starting an attack. I need to feel secure in my own position before I try to assail my opponents', but a lot of players around my rating level will start way more aggressively and make reckless plays against my position early on while my king is still vulnerable, and I find this really hard to play against. I tend to sort of panic when I am outside my comfort zone and prepared lines and make blunders early on.

Overall, openings feel like a weak point in my game: more often than not, if I can get out of them unscathed, I play strongly in the middlegame, but that's a big "if". What can I do and work on defending calmly and confidently against these opponents and take advantage in kind of their incomplete development later on?

Nerwal

This is just a matter of knowledge and experience. There is a limited number of schemes one can use to aggress early on and the defences are often the same. Also work on tactics and calculation will help.


https://www.chess.com/live/game/5675553796 : attack on f7. It can be dealt with by playing the bishop before Nf6 so Ng5 is harmless (one theoretical line that exists is 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 e5 4. Bc4, and now Black should play 4... Be7 or 4... d6 5. d3 Be7 to avoid Ng5). Here Be7 doesn't work because of Qd5 but Bb4 is kind of fine. Sometimes Black defends by playing d5 (like in 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 for instance), and here too 7... d5 is the only serious defence against 7. Ng5. Another way is simply not exposing f7, for instance e6 Bb4 Nge7 is a playable way to develop pieces. Maybe accepting the Morra isn't the best practical choice in that situation too. Playing the Alekhine or the Sicilian as Black isn't the safest choice to get comfortable in the first 15 moves.


https://www.chess.com/live/game/5842164132 : It's a known trap (one important line of the exchange Spanish goes 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. 0-0 Bg4 6. h3 h5). White should not take the bishop but play in the center, and certainly not move the Nf3 once it's done.


https://www.chess.com/live/game/4130950587 : defending against Bxh2+ always requires concrete calculation. Here White can survive with 16. f3 attacking immediately the dangerous knight. Black doesn't get enough for two pieces after 16. f3 Qh5 17. fxg4 Rxf1+ 18. Kxf1 Qh1+. Another issue is that White's opening was not a success. Black was clearly better before Bxh2+ because the Be5 is a much stronger piece than the Bc1. 5. e4 is the critical move here rather than e3 which locks the Bc1 in (generally White would love to play a Stonewall with the bishop at f4, and Black's move order is designed to prevent that but as often it has a drawback and that drawback is lack of control over e4 so 5. e4 is the principled move). 9. cxd5 is wrong as shown by the game; White should play the counter Stonewall with f4 in that situation to hold the grip on e5.

soothsayer8

Thanks for the wonderful response, Nerwal! It was thoughtful of you to go through and pick out some concrete examples from my games, I will look over them. In general, I do analyze all my games, win, lose, or draw, and figure out what I could have done better, especially when I do something like blunder in the opening, I try to categorize my lapse in judgement.