My e4 Repertoire so far (Anything I should add?)

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Avatar of Mpirani

I've been strictly playing e4, and this is my repertoire so far:

- Fried Liver attack

- 4 Knights Italian

- Smith-Morra gambit (against Sicilian players)

What are other common openings you guys run into when playing as white? (As black I know a little bit about every opening and can usually get by just fine. Ideal scenario as black for me is a white player trying to Fried liver me, as I know a ton of theory for the fried liver attack as black and as white.)

Avatar of Kapivarovskic

Well it depends on what kind of positions you like playing so it's hard to add anything blind without further info. However, based on 2 out of your 3 displayed choices it looks to me you enjoy attacking and initiative so I'd suggest you take a look at evans gambit after you try to go for fried liver and black replies with 3..Bc5 instead of 3..Nf6. Really fun to play and lots of attacking potential as opposed to the more solid 4 knights italian (although keep in mind 4 nights italian is technically better than evans gambit)

Still on the 1.e4 e5 topic... after you play Nf6 people somtimes play Petroff (2..Nf6) and philidor defense (2..d6)  instead of the more common 2..Nc6 to defend the e5 pawn.

In the Petroff defense you can either play the main line by capturing e5 pawn with your knight or develop your bishop to c4 - Urusov gambit - gambiting the pawn on e4 and then it can transpose to fried liver if they decline the gambited pawn and play Nc6... but they can also capture the e4 pawn or play Bc5 and that would be too much theory to cover here but they are all very playable.

If they play the somewhat common philidor defense, then the best reply is d4 and if they play Bg5 pinning your knight I recommend you look into Morphy's Opera game as you'll see some cool ideias. If they capture the pawn exd4 then you can recapture with your knight or gambit another pawn smith-morra style. Maybe even 2 pawns danish gambit style.

 

Now.... if  they play f6 to defend the e5 pawn, aka Damiano's defense you can capture the e5 pawn by sacking the knight on e5. Then they have to play Qe7. If they recapture with the f pawn it's a winning position for white, which is cool to play and happens somewhat often below 1000. Youtube how to crush Damiano's defense or something and there should be some interesting material on that.

 

Besides that the most frequent replies you'll see against e4, besides e5 and c5 sicilian, are scandinavian, french and caro-kann. A little less often you might run into modern defense, pirc defense and owen defense. And an occasional alekhine's defense. But tbh that is a lot of theory to memorize (as you can see it's a lot of info here on this post for 2 moves of a couple of lines on e5) because of many different variants that can happen especially cuz they are not played that frequently and when they are played it can be a main line or a side line or pretty much anything and unless it's an obvious blunder it's hard for people our level to punish inaccuracies. So just stick to opening principles against those and you should be fine.

 

All of that being said, don't spend too much time by memorizing lines. I see that you analyze your games after and that's great. If you end up memorizing by osmosis by analyzing it, fantastic, but don't spend too much of your time just looking into theory to try and memorize and hope it happens in a game. Best you can do to get better and win games is to keep it simple. Develop your pieces, control the center,  get your king to safety. Pretty much if you don't hang anything your opponent will. And if you know how to trade down when you have material advantage, then promote your pawns to easily checkmate your opponent you will get to 1000 rapid real quick. Since you have a premium account do some puzzles to be able to spot tactics in your games and you'll find yourself having a lot more success than by simply memorizing lines.

 

 

Good luck hopefully this wasn't all too confusing

 

PS: If you play the fried liver watch out for the traxler counter attack. If you haven't fallen for it you might. It's not a good move for black but you have to know how to reply to keep your winning position as white

Avatar of Mpirani
Kapivarovskic wrote:

Well it depends on what kind of positions you like playing so it's hard to add anything blind without further info. However, based on 2 out of your 3 displayed choices it looks to me you enjoy attacking and initiative so I'd suggest you take a look at evans gambit after you try to go for fried liver and black replies with 3..Bc5 instead of 3..Nf6. Really fun to play and lots of attacking potential as opposed to the more solid 4 knights italian (although keep in mind 4 nights italian is technically better than evans gambit)

Still on the 1.e4 e5 topic... after you play Nf6 people somtimes play Petroff (2..Nf6) and philidor defense (2..d6)  instead of the more common 2..Nc6 to defend the e5 pawn.

In the Petroff defense you can either play the main line by capturing e5 pawn with your knight or develop your bishop to c4 - Urusov gambit - gambiting the pawn on e4 and then it can transpose to fried liver if they decline the gambited pawn and play Nc6... but they can also capture the e4 pawn or play Bc5 and that would be too much theory to cover here but they are all very playable.

If they play the somewhat common philidor defense, then the best reply is d4 and if they play Bg5 pinning your knight I recommend you look into Morphy's Opera game as you'll see some cool ideias. If they capture the pawn exd4 then you can recapture with your knight or gambit another pawn smith-morra style. Maybe even 2 pawns danish gambit style.

 

Now.... if  they play f6 to defend the e5 pawn, aka Damiano's defense you can capture the e5 pawn by sacking the knight on e5. Then they have to play Qe7. If they recapture with the f pawn it's a winning position for white, which is cool to play and happens somewhat often below 1000. Youtube how to crush Damiano's defense or something and there should be some interesting material on that.

 

Besides that the most frequent replies you'll see against e4, besides e5 and c5 sicilian, are scandinavian, french and caro-kann. A little less often you might run into modern defense, pirc defense and owen defense. And an occasional alekhine's defense. But tbh that is a lot of theory to memorize (as you can see it's a lot of info here on this post for 2 moves of a couple of lines on e5) because of many different variants that can happen especially cuz they are not played that frequently and when they are played it can be a main line or a side line or pretty much anything and unless it's an obvious blunder it's hard for people our level to punish inaccuracies. So just stick to opening principles against those and you should be fine.

 

Good luck hopefully this wasn't all too confusing

 

PS: If you play the fried liver watch out for the traxler counter attack. If you haven't fallen for it you might. It's not a good move for black but you have to know how to reply to keep your winning position as white

Against the Traxler I just take with the bishop, then pull back and continue on in the game just a pawn up and my opponent can't castle. It's not the trappiest line but it's pretty easy to play as white. In terms of Caro-Kann I've been wondering if there's any intuitive counters to it, or if anything, some way to play a more open position against the Caro-Kann.

Avatar of Kapivarovskic

I just edited my post and made some minor changes in it to cover some important things I forgot to mention. And as for the traxler, yes  that's a good reply it's usually what I do as well because when they play the traxler they are more prepared to Nxf7 and I like to take them off their prep. I just mentioned it because most fried liver players who never heard of the traxler will fall for it the first time they face it.

Avatar of Mpirani
Kapivarovskic wrote:

I just edited my post and made some minor changes in it to cover some important things I forgot to mention. And as for the traxler, yes  that's a good reply it's usually what I do as well because when they play the traxler they are more prepared to Nxf7 and I like to take them off their prep. I just mentioned it because most fried liver players who never heard of the traxler will fall for it the first time they face it.

Yep, I learned the Traxler a short while back and got a beautiful 12 move checkmate with the black pieces because my opponent had no idea what they were doing against it.

 

Avatar of IMKeto
Mpirani wrote:

I've been strictly playing e4, and this is my repertoire so far:

- Fried Liver attack

- 4 Knights Italian

- Smith-Morra gambit (against Sicilian players)

 

What are other common openings you guys run into when playing as white? (As black I know a little bit about every opening and can usually get by just fine. Ideal scenario as black for me is a white player trying to Fried liver me, as I know a ton of theory for the fried liver attack as black and as white.)

Your openings should be based on the type of middlegames you like ti play.  So....what type of middlegames do you like to play?

Avatar of dfgh123

If you mean online chess then the Philidor exchange is popular as well as the anti-fried liver 3...h6 maybe even being more popular than the 2 knights.

Avatar of Mpirani
IMBacon wrote:
Mpirani wrote:

I've been strictly playing e4, and this is my repertoire so far:

- Fried Liver attack

- 4 Knights Italian

- Smith-Morra gambit (against Sicilian players)

 

What are other common openings you guys run into when playing as white? (As black I know a little bit about every opening and can usually get by just fine. Ideal scenario as black for me is a white player trying to Fried liver me, as I know a ton of theory for the fried liver attack as black and as white.)

Your openings should be based on the type of middlegames you like ti play.  So....what type of middlegames do you like to play?

I would much rather play open positions. This is why I enjoy playing e4 e5 a lot.

Avatar of Mpirani
dfgh123 wrote:

If you mean online chess then the Philidor exchange is popular as well as the anti-fried liver 3...h6 maybe even being more popular than the 2 knights.

I feel like anti-fried liver keeps black back on development though doesn't it? I've noticed if my opponent plays h6 early I can just get my bishop out, castle and take control of the center really quick

Avatar of dfgh123
Mpirani wrote:
dfgh123 wrote:

If you mean online chess then the Philidor exchange is popular as well as the anti-fried liver 3...h6 maybe even being more popular than the 2 knights.

I feel like anti-fried liver keeps black back on development though doesn't it? I've noticed if my opponent plays h6 early I can just get my bishop out, castle and take control of the center really quick

If you like the fried liver you will blast the anti guys off the board I always do this

 

Avatar of Mpirani
dfgh123 wrote:
Mpirani wrote:
dfgh123 wrote:

If you mean online chess then the Philidor exchange is popular as well as the anti-fried liver 3...h6 maybe even being more popular than the 2 knights.

I feel like anti-fried liver keeps black back on development though doesn't it? I've noticed if my opponent plays h6 early I can just get my bishop out, castle and take control of the center really quick

If you like the fried liver you will blast the anti guys off the board I always do this

 

That's brutal. I find it hard to believe it's pretty much still equal after that

Avatar of Coach_Kashchei

Avatar of TheUltraTrap

That's great repertoire! You just need to be aware that you might face 1... e6 and 1... c6.

Something around those lines. Also, when you talk about smith-morra gambit...

You should not take with queen. Smith-Morra gambit, is a gambit of the d-pawn!

Anyway, i think Sicilian has no need to play this direct gambit. the Sicilian is an exciting opening that, in my opinion, should be played correctly in the normal lines!

 

Avatar of Mpirani
TheUltraTrap wrote:

That's great repertoire! You just need to be aware that you might face 1... e6 and 1... c6.

Something around those lines. Also, when you talk about smith-morra gambit...

You should not take with queen. Smith-Morra gambit, is a gambit of the d-pawn!

Anyway, i think Sicilian has no need to play this direct gambit. the Sicilian is an exciting opening that, in my opinion, should be played correctly in the normal lines!

 

I haven't gotten around to studying a good counter to the french just yet, but for the Caro-Kann I've been learning the fantasy variation.

As for the Smith-Morra Gambit, I do offer the C-Pawn as well although I know the line for the declined variation as well. The reason I want to play the Smith-Morra Gambit is because I would much prefer to take my opponent out of their comfort zone, as most players playing the Sicilian prep for open and closed Sicilian lines.

 

Avatar of ConfusedGhoul

if you want an open response to the Caro-Kann then the Panov Attack offers a nice initiative at the cost of an IQP

Avatar of king5minblitz119147

 

Avatar of adityasaxena4
ConfusedGhoul wrote:

if you want an open response to the Caro-Kann then the Panov Attack offers a nice initiative at the cost of an IQP

or even the Labahn Attack Caro-Kann after e4 c6 b4

Avatar of adityasaxena4

Also what about the Scotch Gambit , the Nakmahnson Gambit , the Italian Gambit , the Guioco Piano Game and the Italian Game and the Scotch Game and the Steiner Variation of the French Defence

Avatar of RobertJames_Fisher

two knight vs Caro kann, all day long