is the slav opening worth it

i don't know if the slav is worth it. also i am under 1000 and am looking for a good opening.

You shouldn't worry about your opening so much, just practice tactics.

If you are under 1000, you should worry about not hanging pieces.Just check this game of yours:

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=418406600

You lost your bishop on move 3! And your queen on move 6!

On the other hand, the slav is a good, solid opening. But, I insist, knowing the theory on the slav won't make you better, not right now.

agree with temp_ddg at under 1000 im pretty sure you might not even see D4!! i suggest getting better at mid game slav is a good opening but is harder to learn than the basic principles learn those first and then the opening

i play a lot of bullet, do u guys think i should go back to rapid and standard?

I think that right now you could improve by playing blitz. Your main goals should be:
* Don't hang pieces.

* Recognize your opponent's hanging pieces.

Follow those rules and your game will improve, for sure.

thx temp ddg im going now

what level rating do you think i should be playing against? my blitz is 697.

plz can check out my game and anylysis would be nice. thx

Playing against similar rating of yours will be fine. Just play enough until you don't directly hang pieces.

There is nothing to analyze if you keep hanging pieces! That should be your main concern, then you should work on simple tactics, so you don't hang pieces on simple tactics (like a knight fork).

Ignore these guys and have some fun with the openings. I've looked at both of the popular slav books vigus, and burghess. They are excellent books although the vigus would be recommended. Of the 20,000 blitz games I"ve played on playchess I'd say very few are slavs. Most are the semi-slav. Doesn't mean its not important but based on my d4 openings the majority choose the semi-slav. I'd take a look at vigorito semi slav book. You'd have a lot of fun with that book.

I'm puzzled by all this tactical mumbo jumbo.

Considering that Randomemory has the most impressive-looking chess statistics on here, I would take his advice the most seriously. As a probably Class B-ish player myself, I'll also add that below 1000 your other goal should be to consistently get to a point where you follow the general guidelines of good opening play: work to control the center, castle early and often, don't move a pawn or piece twice without good reason, generally develop a knight before a bishop on the side of the board you're developing first (king side or queen side), don't make too many pawn moves, don't waste too much time, etc.

Much of modern opening theory does contradict these principles, but until you're strong enough to understand the logic behind certain GM-class moves, it's not worth it to try to find exceptions to the above guidelines. In particular, if you don't understand the properties of the pawn structures you're playing, then opening theory often won't make much sense.

It's also generally easier to improve more quickly by playing slower games, but as a primarily blitz player myself, I can't say I adhere to that one too well.

That's because you know (or rather, you think to know) openings, not chess. And anyway, you don't have to know chess to offer an opinion, do you?

A tad more on the serious side, your "ignore these guys..." thing is a fool's advice.

In most of your games, you are out of the opening before move 5. It is rare that you and your opponents make 10 book moves.

Don't worry about the books. Worry about following basic principles: Develop your pieces toward the center democratically, control the center, protect your king.

Work on your tactics. You will improve tremendously if you stop worrying about named openings and use that energy on tactics puzzles.

When you play blitz, take a break every ten games or so and check to see what sort of tactics you missed in those games. Most people make the same mistakes over and over again without even knowing it!

My statement is a bit overdramatized. I would always take a masters advice on how to play chess compared to my own. I just think on this board that openings get a bad wrap. Granted people have different ideas on how to learn to play chess but I think too many people criticise the ones who want to learn certain openings because they're quote "no good".

A sidebar: blitz has been criticised as being a poor way to play I think Nakamura proved yesterday that the better grandmasters in classical are also the top players in the world in blitz also. It doesn't have to take 30 minutes to find a move. They can move quite fast and effective if pressed into it.

@benonidoni

Yes once you can play chess blitz is fine. But to learn blitz is quite useless since you need time to spot a threatened piece, identify the various tactics. hanging pieces, threats, come up with a good attack plan etc. GM's will know the ideas behind the openings beforehand and thus need less time to consider.

All that proves, really, is that blitz ratings are correlated with classical time control ratings...a fact that has been well established for quite some time now.
I can't speak too harshly about playing blitz since a.) I'm not THAT good of a player yet, and b.) it's largely what I've been playing in the past several months myself (though much of that is because I don't have many opportunities to play longer timed games, other than some 30|0 games on here which I intend to do more of).

As far as openings go, I used to sort of be one of these amateur opening junkies myself. Trust me, it's of very limited value if you can't play a decent middle game (and I'm still trying to work on this myself, though again, it's been mostly in blitz games). You know how many times I played against guys who know next-to-nothing in terms of theoretical knowledge, yet consistently got beat (and still do) because they understood more important things like tactical patterns better? Too many to count. Thankfully, enough of those experiences jaded me on extensive opening study.

no.

Bullet, Rapid, Standard, they are all junk.  If you truly want to get better, you need to play at Over the Board tournaments and in Correspondence Tournaments.  Time controls like:

40 Moves 2 Hours followed by Sudden Death in 1 Hour,

40 Moves in 90 Minutes followed by Sudden Death in 30 Minutes with a 30 Second Increment per move, and

10 moves in 30 days followed by 10 moves in 30 days followed by 10 moves in 30 days, etc

... are what you need to be playing if you want to get better.  Forget about Openings and Bullet Chess.  Openings you can focus on later when you are higher rated, and bullet doesn't do you any good what-so-ever.  You should play some blitz to test openings, but even blitz should be limited.  Nothing replaces sitting down at a table with a chess board and a book and doing some hard core studying.  1 hour of studying is better than 12 hours of internet blitz chess.

if i dont have time to play 30/0, is 15/0 okay?

I believe 15/0 is perfectly ok to learn not to hang pieces. Later you will need slower games to improve other skills.