Best Basic Opening Principles

     I am putting together a list of very basic principles for teaching the concepts (as opposed to memorizing a list of openings since I don't want anyone just learning the game to be overwhelmed).

1. Control of the center of the board is your goal because many pieces have more mobility and opportunity in the central squares. This means developing your d and e file pawns to start. As a novice player, you want to stick to very basic strategies.

2. Develop your pieces with tempo which means you want to move a piece once into a good position attacking or defending the central squares.

3. Develop Knights before Bishops and keep those Knights attacking the central squares. A Knight on the rim (edge of the board) is dim.

4. Try to attack and defend a square with multiple pieces.

5. Castle Kingside if possible, early in the opening of the game.

6. Do not bring out your Queen early since she is an attractive target.

7. Look at the big picture or the entire board.

     Feel free to add to this. I am trying to build up a simple opening principles guide that will allow new players to get a feel for opening strategies. Thanks for your help....Hugh

Try not to move pices more than once in the opening.

Don't force players to do what they were already probably going to do.

With a few exceptions (queens gambit, etc.) leave the c and f pawns alone in the opening.

Try to get your kingside rook on the e-file after castling.

However, other than that, leave your rooks alone as a general rule.

Try not to overextend your pawns, keep them close enough that if attacked can easily be protected.

For every move that you make, either think of two good reasons to make it, or pick a different move.

Great point about overextension of the pawns. The "two good reasons rule" is excellent! Thanks.

since Batsford,s chess openings runs to 5 volumes, & would take years to even make a dent, define basic.

While perhaps true in bughouse, I find the Sicilian one of black's best defenses against 1.e4

2.3 Fine’s rules for the opening
1. Open with either the e-pawn or the d-pawn.
2. Wherever possible, make a good developing
move which threatens something or adds to the
pressure on the centre.
3. Develop knights before bishops.
4. Pick the most suitable square for a piece and
develop it there once and for all.
5. Make one or two pawn moves in the opening,
not more.
6. Do not bring your queen out too early.
7. Castle as soon as possible, preferably on the
king’s side.
8. Play to get control of the centre.
9. Always try to maintain at least one pawn in
the centre.
10. Do not sacrifice without a clear and adequate
reason, eg.:
• it secures a tangible advantage in devel-
opment
• it deflects the opponent’s queen
• it prevents the opponent from castling
• it enables a strong attack to be developed

Thank you and I see everyone's point. Define Basic? Ok, you have a group of young novice chess players. Their attention span is short. Therefore I would like to come up with three pages of simple advice. That's to answer stanhope13. Now to address paul211. thank you so much for your thoughtful insight. It is very educational and informative. What I meant by directing your attention towards the center was a more generalized concept for these kids. However, you make an extremely valid point and it poses the question: What does a young novice player do when faced with a nonconventional opening. being taught to concentrate on central control. You make a point that I need to address. Thank you. The whole point of this posting was to get thoughts from more experienced chess players. I am not a great player but I am very good at communication and keeping youngster's attention. My goal is to show kids from really tough homes that chess can be a way out of their day to day struggles. Because I'm not an expert, I seek your advice. Again thank you and keep the suggestions coming. As soon as I have the three pages together, I'll post them and see what you think!

I have heard some strong chess players and teachers say that the best way for a kid to improve in chess is for them to play e4 as white, and against e4 to play e5 as black so that they learn how to play the open game and use their pieces actively.

I'm deeply convinced that e4 is the best start move for a beginner. Open and semi-open games force you to pay attention to each and every move you make, because the consequences of a weak move are often fatal (and readily clear), unlike in closed or semi-closed games. Furthermore, I think open, tactical games are more comprehensible and funny for kids (and not only!) than closed, positional ones.

e4 is what has been hammered into me. It seems to make more sense in development and early Kingside Castling.

Most of the material I have studied suggests that castling early in a game is a good idea.  One course in the chess mentor application on this site showed a disadvantage of castling early.  When the white king castled kingside within the first few moves of the game, the black army marched its pawns on the f, g & h files to destroy white's defense.  Is this a concern in most games or an exception? 

The training software I use brings up a similar issue. It makes sense to castle early. It allows you to concentrate on the rest of the game while the King is safely tucked away. However, if your opponent has developed all of his or her pieces they can then concentrate on breaking the wall around the castled king down. This problem came up in a tactical exercise with Chessmaster 10th edition.

Please allow me to add a thought to the above.  Always, ALWAYS be looking for tactics in the opening.  There are many pawn snatches or overworked pieces that can be expolited.

Many folks think about their openings as being the first 5-10 moves or so and then when this is done they start to look at the game trying to figure out the strengths and weakness between the two sides.

An "opening trap" is your advisary making a mistake; often of this nature.

At every stage of the game you must be keenly aware of the interaction of your pieces with your opponent's pieces. Where is there conflict and tension. If you adhere strictly to principles like developing your knight's before your bishops and only moving your d and e pawns, you'll miss plenty of opportunity to interact with your opponent to your benefit.

Loomis brings up a very important point regarding development. You can really loose tempo by not being open to subtle changes in your opening plan. Paul211 makes another critical point, castle early. It was pointed out to me in a recent game that I didn't castle early enough and it created major problems down the road going into the middle game.

This may be following the opening closely, but I'd add:

- Connect your Rooks

This will be useful later in the game to protect the back rank (this was useful to me!)

I agree with connecting rooks.

I never agreed with rooks having a material value of 5, maybe 4 tops.  But two

connected rooks are an easy 10.

1.  Get your center pawns out.

2.  Castle.

3.  Get your knights and bishops developed onto good squares.

4.  Castle.

5.  Make it your goal to try and accomplish all this in your first 10 moves.

6.  But don't just focus on making these moves; pay attention to the threats and/or opportunities created by your opponent's moves.

7.  Did I mention Castle?

Develop a section about how to develop bishops.   Best and worst locations and why.  Knights, to some degree 'place' themselves but new players have no idea where to put a bishop or how to decide.  Sound bishop development will go a long way to making a new player better and faster.

I think elbeasto was talking about not moving them with white during the opening. However, I think someone must have forgotten to tell Petrosian not to play 1.c4 all the time.