Any Opening Suggestions For A 1000-1200 Player?

Do you think he just wrote a bunch of principles and said to follow them?

I am probably not in a position to give you advices, but learn some counters for the wayward queen attack. (this opening puts me on tilt its so annoying for me) like parham attack. 

Burgess' "The Mammoth Book of Chess" discourages beginners using this opening, quoting Steve Davis as saying, "It's boring". If all the writers for beginners are saying "try something else", is it surprising that everyone is trying something else.

Because it's too specific. It's just sensible to get broad knowledge first, not read a whole book on a single defense. Especially when you'd get a lot more out of going over those games if you knew basics first.

But going over games or reading a book is better than not doing those things. If that's what a beginner enjoys, then go for it.

However if you're 7 years old and you want to be a pro, and your parents hire an ex Soviet coach, you can be sure openings will be a low order of importance.

Who knows.  His quote on the opening serving one purpose is one of my favorites.  

 lajos wrote "when beginners ask me for the best way to open a game, i often advise 1.nf3 2.g3 3.bg2 4.0-0, after which few troubles loom for white"

and also

white
1.ruy lopez exchange
2.kings indian attack against french defence
3.caro-kann exchange
4.wing gambit/c3/rossolimo/kings indian attack/closed against sicilian

black
e5
1.old steinitz/modern steinitz defence against ruy lopez.
2.effective but uncomplicted defences against all the gambits
3.three knights to avoid four knights
4.giuoco piano/two knights
or
1.french defence
and
kings indian defence

Perhaps it is worthwhile to mention the next few words in a section that goes for about two pages: "As a player's strength increases, of course, so do the demands on his ability to play the openings. It is necessary, therefore, to develop such skills beyond the mere memorization of a few opening moves."

The Portisch chapter is about 40 pages and concludes with, "... I urge the reader to do his own analysis in the development of an opening repertoire." The book is in descriptive notation, having been written about four decades ago.

Think the context is of any importance?

My question was not about reading a whole book. Do you have the same objection about looking at games that have been chosen to help the reader to make sense of "a few" specific moves?

Do you think very many fit into that category here?

XXX

Your question was not about reading a whole book? Then it's a waste of money. Better to buy a game collection and use the whole book.

I regret not playing over games? Yes. I also regret wasting my time on opening books.

Do I think people are 7 years olds wanting to be pro? No, but the point is what kind of training is most useful, and what kind is just for fun. Sure I could suggest to the OP the elephant gambit. That might be fun... and if it is, great. I'll leave it to others to suggest that and he can do whatever he wants. I prefer to give advice for long term improvement.

Ever encountered advice like this?

"... To begin with, only study the main lines ... you can easily fill in the unusual lines later. ..." - GM John Nunn (2007)

My question was about whether or not you expressed regret about not playing over games "as a beginner". (See #26.)

Could it be that your problem was "trashy database dump" books? (#32)

Are "most useful" and "for fun" the only two categories? Doesn't "useful" depend on the person doing the training?

Has anyone here proposed suggesting the elephant gambit to DeathTank3?

By my reading, Burgess was quoting Steve Davis on the position resulting from 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Bc5 4 d3 h6 5 Nc3 d6 6 h3 Nf6, and Burgess brought up 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Bc5 4 c3 Nf6 5 d4 exd4 6 cxd4 Bb4+ 7 Bd2 as one possible alternative to the boring position.

First things as a beginner I would:

1) Give up gambits for now

2) learn how to play solid positions like the Sicilian, Caro and KID

3) start backwards and study the endgame first...the purpose of the openings is to get to a playable end game

When I started I was a tactical player believe it or not, as I evolved to positional play and endgame my rating started to climb....just speaking from personal experience....lots of other good advice here too...

Well, I'd definitely not play KID or CaroKann as a beginner. CaroKann especially.

Actually I'd recommend being very active and aggressive in the opening - I never even reached an equal endgame before I was rated 1400+ USCF.. All my otb games before then were over far far before any endgame.

You need to focus on tactics mainly as a beginner, with basic positional competency that basically lets you stay active and developed.

In my opinion, endgames aren't that important until you can comfortably reach one.

"... Apart from openings and middlegames, the student is commonly advised to study the endgame, sometimes with an admonition to stay away from serious opening preparation until an unspecified 'later'. When I was beginning to play chess four decades ago, this advice was ubiquitous, accompanied by the 'fact' that all the Soviet children learned endings in depth before they were allowed to play any games. That turned out to be an utter myth, but there's no doubt that learning a limited set of basic endings is absolutely essential for your development as a player. ..." - IM John Watson (2010)

You play a better than me....but I guess you played somewhere else...in my neck of the woods 2 of 3 of the 1000-1400 USCF rated  games reached the endgame or close to it... a lot of them were unbalanced already, but some were salvaged with good endgame play. Also of the numerous beginners I taught most "got" tactics relatively easy, but to really improve past 1400 they needed to understand strategy and endgame too. All of it is important, tactics are great too, just speaking from 10 years of teaching tourists and kids that happened to walk in the club I used to run in Destin, Florida...I beautiful place if you want a vacation.

Well, I have no clue how strong those soviet children were ( I'd wager a lot better than 1000-1200 rating on this site though), but I made decent progress knowing only basic king pawn endgames, with a total study time of a few hours, and I never even got the chance to use any of that knowledge until I was 1600.

In fact, I'm guessing those soviet children were more or less very talented future masters who don't make simple tactical blunders often, and could destroy the vast majority of players here.

And I actually focused training on trying to make the game never reach an endgame, basically by playing very aggressively and being very aware of tactics.

And it needs to be more than just getting basic tactics though - very often in a game you'll many opportunities to do something tactical in nature, like a pawn sac or a pawn grab attempt, or something to really mix up the position. This is all related to basic positional play (activate pieces, grab material) but tactics will get heavily involved.

This doesn't work for me against 1800+ players, which was a bit painful to realize, but its actually amazing that the tournament that got me to 1800+, about 4/9 of my opponents, all around 1700s, were down a piece of worse by move 20, and I think only one game got into a competitive endgame, which I won by getting my king active and pressuring the opponents king - it was a queens endgame.

The one game I lost on that tournament I lost in 30 moves to a kingside attack when i grabbed a pawn - it was a good move, but hard to play, but either way the endgame wasn't going to be equal :P

Eventually, as I realized, more subtle positional play is needed, but its not nearly as close as some think it is, imo.

But yeah, some 1900 and 2100 tourneys I played I got into a lot of equal/tricky endgames.

So a lot of it is my personal experience, but honestly Dan heismans approach of safe and active is really what 1000-1200s, and much higher than that, need to focus on.

Keep clear of gambits. This includes the Queens Gambit.

if you want to play queens pawn openings, play the London system or the Colle-Zukertort.

only play solid lines.

ruy Lopez, Italian game, London system.

avoid tactically difficult positional Openings, like the Sicilian and the Caro Kann. 

Dont play to win, play to learn.

play as many higher rated players as you can.

even if it ranks your rating, you will learn a lot.

feel free to send me a friendship request and we can plan some live games for strictly teaching purposes.