The Grob

The Grob is a bad opening (about the worst) for 2 reasons.

1. It does not lay a claim to the center

2. It weakens the king side (you cannot castle short anymore).

Best openings (especially for beginners) are either e4 or d4 openings. Both directly lay a claim on the center and allow fluid development of pieces.

Thank you but I don't like these basic openings but if they're the best im going to have to give them a try.

Chess is for humans in many ways a concepts (and calculation) game. The 3 main concepts of the start of the game are 1. Develop your pieces and 2. Control the center. 3. Find a safe spot for your king

Good openings adhere to these concepts bad openings don't. The Grob for example sins at least against concepts 2 and 3. Complex (but correct) openings like the English or the Reti do not sin against these rules but it asks a lot more from the player to keep to the concepts.

Openings like e4 and d4 offer more guidance on how to conquer the center and develop and are therefor generally better at least until you have a strong grasp of the principles

Nice

If you find the Grob intuitive, you are a better man than I am. I immensely admire the games of the late great Michael Basman artistically but fail miserably to be able to play g4 openings successfully in my own play. Find a copy of "U Cannot Be Serious" (Welling & Basman, Thinker's Press 2021) and have at it. Be prepared to receive showers of execration from Grob-haters. Be true to yourself.

Thank you but you of course can Not compare your elo-range to mine. I strongly believe that you would win at least 9 out of 10 games Despite you playing the Grob on my elo range. I've been playing the Grob for pretty much all of my games and never really hat problems with it. But i'm trying to learn a new opening because I don't think the Grob can take me as far as I want. My question is where could I learn a new opening the best? Should I Read a book on it or Do the chess.com lessons? The problem is I don't have premium.

Also forgot i'm writing this on my other account

The best way to learn depends on your learning style (and a little on your goals and time constraints).

Some people like learning form books some people (like me) like learning from video's. Whatever floats your boat really. Try to understand how the moves are connected to the 3 principles of the opening (development, center, king safety). Is it a development move and/or does it attack the center. Perhaps it forces the opponent to make a move that hinders him from developing.

Don't forget to play you opening in a lot of games. Longer time controls are slightly better but I think numbers matter more than timecontrols. A quick analysis after the game (nothing to serious) to see where you want wrong. In the end chess has to keep being fun and only learning moves hardly is fun.

@CronosTheSecond having surfed a few of your games, when you win with the Grob you're winning the way a lot of Grob players (and players of many unusual openings - I'm not singling out the Grob here) win: you have a better handle on how to play the positions than your opponents do. And there lies the crucial thing. One can waste years looking for an Objectively Best Opening only to discover one is constitutionally ill-suited to playing the resulting middlegames and has lost a ton of grade points by making a complete mess of them. I would encourage you to just experiment. Not aimlessly though. Get a book which runs you through the underlying ideas of a lot of openings (for example there's a section in "The Mammoth Book of Chess", or Reuben Fine's "The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings" is well out of date but still a classic). Try them out when you think you have a decent grasp of the themes from your reading. Don't stop at the first opening you try out even if it works well enough. You might find another still more in keeping with your instincts, and if not you'll still have learned something about different sorts of position along the way. Don't worry if you shed ELO points while gaining understanding. Grade is less important than knowing you've improved your understanding, and with improved understanding the grade will eventually follow. But above all, if when you try doing anything anyone advises you it starts to make you enjoy your Chess less, reject their advice. And that includes maybe rejecting mine here.

You can safely forget about the Grob. It is based just on a single cheapo, which even does not work when Black falls for it.

If you like the grob, I think you'll also like the Polish opening. It's a lot like the grob, but allows you to castle and protect your king better. It starts out the same as the grob, but you advance your queen's knight's pawn two squares instead of your king's knight's pawn. You can still steal the opponent's rook if they mess up, and you can easily trap their knight as well.

Thanks y'all!

They are nothing alike.

One thing (most important) is the 1.b4 does not weaken the potential king's shelter, and the other one is that 1.b4 e5 Bb2 is very different than 1.g5 d5 Bg2: The e5 pawn is en prise at the first instance.

Generally black takes back with the d-pawn (4 .... d7xc6) as it opens lines for development. In that case Nxe5 does not work because black can play either Qd4 or Qg5 both with an equal position (though personally I like black because of the bishop pair)