Opening repertoire

What openings do you recommend for a beginner to study and your reasons why ? Is it because a particular opening is most frequently encountered ? Versatile ? Simple to understand ?

And how he/ she goes about building his/her opening repertoire ?

oooh good question. Well I believe the first opening people learn is called the "giuoco piano" meaning quiet game in italian. I would say people learn it and should practice it first because it demonstrates basic opening principles, like development, castling, and how to move your pawns. It can be a little boring, but nevertheless solid.  An opening in the same vein is four knights. 

A beginner should stick to 1.e4 at first, and then look into 1.d4.  Another popular opening that can be learned and experimented with is the spanish (or Ruy Lopez) and the king's gambit. Both are enjoyable, and will provide the player with many different challenges. Another very versatile opening is the King's Indian Attack, which can be played aganist almost any defence black sets up.

As far as 1.d4, I would first learn about Queen's Gambit. That is a ridiculously popular opening, and worth learning about.

If you're playing black, learn the equivalent defences black sets up against the basic openings you're learning about (like giuoco and spanish) and practice with some others, like the French, or King's Indian (which is quite versatile). 

 To somehow bring this to an end, let me say that there are openings and defences which have volumes of modern theoretical material, and there are some you don't even see at the master level anymore. Ignore all this! If you are a beginner, it is important to learn how to play, not the latest theory. That has it's own time. Learn to walk before running right? Plus - you don't want to get swamped and overwhelmed with info. If you need any more info or clarification on some of these openings and defences I threw at you pm me. 

Good luck and have fun! 

I cringe when beginners are told to play the Guico Piano. As Julius says, it's boring. If you want to learn to love the game, don't start with this opening. I also believe it has poor instructive value in terms of teaching you opening principles. Sure, you develop your pieces and that's good, but for crying out loud it's like each side is ignoring the other. Then you just wind up in some game with developed pieces and no conflict!

I would recommend that a beginner an open game -- I realize that 1. e4 e5 is often called "open game" but this is not enough to get an open game. An open game means there are pawn exchanges. Whatever you do, create conflict! 

Thank you for giving your time to explain, JuliusH and Loomis.

I read somewhere in his books, Silman complained that too often people begin to learn chess with too much emphasis on the middlegame and virtually nothing at the opening and the endgame. The opening is seen as the boring bit that we need to get through to get to the exciting middlegame. The endgame is seen more as a formality or a mopping up exercise like thinking such as " if you haven't won the middlegame, you can forget winning the endgame".

 I am starting to understand that we cannot improve our chess by just learning one phase of the game - hence my post here, asking for ideas.

 And thanks JuliusH for your offer to assist with clarification. 

There are so many opening books out there - there is a great chance of wasting too much money - I bought a Eric Schiller - waste of time, got more confused than enligthened.

 Earlengray, thanks for the tip on Seirawan's book.

Here are what I consider the top 10 reasons to pick an opening as a beginner :

10 - Top GMs play it, but only since they are GMs (Najdorf, 6...Ng4 variation for instance)

9 - It's the opening you want to play in 10 years

8 - You don't like this opening, but it's supposed to be a good learning tool

7 - You own a book on this opening

6 - Someone you don't know recommends it to you on a forum and his explanations makes sense to you

5 - Someone you don't know tells you it's a good opening choice on a forum and describes its experience with it as a beginner : this experience matches what you're expecting from your first opening choices (whether learning or getting loads of points, whatever)

4 - It's recommended as a good opening choice for beginners in books written by chess teachers/trainers

3 - A personal coach recommends it to you

2 - You have a friend who plays it and can explain it to you and help you improve

1 - You feel attracted to it for any personal reason (a beautiful game ?)

1st e4 opening: giuoco piano or another open game like the scotch gambit. For reasons pointed out already.

1st d4 opening: colle system. System based opening, very useful opening and easy to remember or improvise.

Personally, I spent many fun hours with the Max Lange and other Italian gambit variations against the Two Knights etc. The italian game can be boring if you don't throw a grenade into it early enough.

Have you had a look at njscf.org? Pete Tamburro presents a podcast called openings for amatuers (at least he did, I've not been on playchess.com for a longtime). He has some analysis on the Max Lange as white and the Colle system.

The Giuoco Piano is only quiet and boring if you don't play it right. Many beginners are told to play 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5, and they play those moves, and then they don't know what to do next, so it leads to the stereotypical boring games. The key is that these beginners need to be told to play a pawn break as soon as possible to make the game exciting. As white, this means 4. c3, aiming for 5. d4. Once those center pawns are traded, things get open and exciting very quickly.

--Fromper 

>>>Julius

>>>A beginner should stick to 1.e4 at first, and then look into 1.d4.  Another popular opening that can be learned and experimented with is the spanish (or Ruy Lopez) and the king's gambit.

The Spanish game has a huge book.  That is not some thing I would steer a beginner into.

I think that learning at least one main opening for white is a very good idea and how you want to play black on e4 or d4 openings.  You should learn the following on these White and Black openings.

1. The book on all major lines.

2. The objectives for middle game and end game.

3. Common pitfalls average club players will make in these openings and how to exploit them.

While its true openings should take the smaller amoung of your chess study time they are impotant.

If you want to spend you time well I suggest you either sign up for the chess mentor here at chess.com or look at 400 points in 400 days.

Subscribe to chess mentor: 

http://www.chess.com/chessmentor/subscribe.html

400 points in 400 days article (I don't like posting PDF links so you can find them on this HTML page at the bottom):

http://www.masschess.org/Chess_Horizons/index_ch.asp

I signed up form one month of chess mentor and I am enjoying it very much so far.  $14.95 for an unlimited month is a good deal.

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The Dutch!!!

 1.d4 f5!!! 0-1

If you are a beginner, it doesnt really matter if an opening has a huge opening book, if the moves usually make sense, because you wont be playing people who know all the moves.  I played the Ruy lopez as a beginner, indeed i still play the ruy lopez as a beginner!  It's surprisingly difficult to get a bad position out of it as white, and most of the moves make obvious sense so you dont really have to remember lines as such.  I really dont think you should just be looking to trick or trap your opponent in the opening either.  Rather than looking out for mistakes you should be just playing the board looking for good moves as they occur, not before from some book.  As a beginner you shouldnt be playing people who will go very far along recognised opening lines anyway, so a large amount of bookwork will be wasted.  The Ruy has many advantages to a beginner too, as it is really packed with useful tactics and ideas.  Things like pins, or even potential pins, king safety and the importance of castling, open files, and playing moves using the position of an opponent's weak king.  Also how to 'NOT take a piece' and instead of trading bishop for knight, using your well placed bishop against the knight to your advantage.  It's really like a self-contained chess course. 

I would also say the italian game is a decent starting opening, except you might get a bad impression from castling if you do it at the wrong time.   The king's gambit could be good to teach you tactics, but it would be a very steep learning curve, and might put you off chess, or possibly teach you some bad habits.  A lot of the tactics involved are quite deep, and if you dont fully understand why something is being done you can end up just giving pieces away for free...

>>>sstteevveenn 

>>>I really dont think you should just be looking to trick or trap your opponent in the opening either.

I don't either but you should be aware of the mistakes people will make in the openings.  This is what chess is about.  Getting a better position that the other person so a combination will appear and you will win by material or checkmate.

>>>Rather than looking out for mistakes you should be just playing the board looking for good moves as they occur, not before from some book.

That what good moves are about.  Getting a better position what the person on the other side of the board.  Good opening books will give you objects for the opening, the middle game and he end game and they will also give you pointers moves that people tend to make in the said opening and how to explote those poorer moves.

Thank you everyone for your valuable advice and opinion. JuliusH, I took a look at Ruy Lopez - and I shudder. It's such a big book that it is easily the equivalent to all the material contained all the other books. I think sstteevveenn is right in that we don't play people who know all the moves and it's surprisingly difficult to get a bad position out of it as white. I think I'll give it a go and see how I fare.

Good point Chesslover96, I'll have a go at the Scandanavian too. As white, I don't know how to address it - I get thrown when the centre is fought for so early.

Bobmutch, I signed up ChessMentor two weeks before its online version ( bugger ! ) - but it has more tactics than openings.

And lastly, NM Reb - I finished reading Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning - and he too doesn't advocate spending too much time learning openings - he says that there is more value in learning endgames first - arrghhh!!!! only if I survive that far in a game!

Indeed chess is Life....