100 Chess Openings Pdf

[Calfu Baransky]

1I'll look through Fundamental Chess Openings, Nunn's Chess Openings, or even Reuben Fine's old Ideas Behind the Chess Openings if I want to explore an opening I'm not familiar with for basic understanding of the goals of the openings and their variations.

2, Next, I'll analyze the moves using Chess King's ($27.95 at Amazon) huge GigaKing Database, where I can make book or non-book moves at any position, search the database, and see how many games did the same and where each side decided to attack.

3. Then, I'll play some relatively quick games with the freebie Lucas Chess where I can set up an engine to play around 1200, then 1300, 1400, 1500, etc. as I get more familiar with the opening. This way I can take-back stupid moves and quickly see what else I can do. I can also set up the engine to select from among the top few best moves it evaluates so there's some randomness to the games or I can set it up to play slightly better, equal, or worse than I am playing. I can also set it up so that a certain number of initial moves are made so I can arrive at the position I want to explore.

"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)

In one of his books about an opening, GM Nigel Davies wrote (2005), "The way I suggest you study this book is to play through the main games once, relatively quickly, and then start playing the variation in actual games. Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. There is time enough later for involvement with the details, after playing your games it is good to look up the line."

-ways-to-learn-new-openings

"... A remark like 'games are rarely decided in the opening' does not really do justice to the issue. ... even if an initial opening advantage gets spoiled by subsequent mistakes, this doesn't render it meaningless. In the long run, having the advantage out of the opening will bring you better results. Maybe this warning against the study of openings especially focuses on 'merely learning moves'. But almost all opening books and DVD's give ample attention to general plans and developing schemes, typical tactics, whole games, and so on. ..." - IM Willy Hendriks (2012)

I have a lot of resources, including about six shelf feet of opening monographs and opening encyclopedias, but this is what I use most often: -powerbook-2017-chess-database-software-on-dvd-and-capablancas-my-chess-career-e-book/

The stats in PowerBook are vastly more reliable. I've folund lines that look really good in Chess.com's Explorer, according to the stats, but a quick glance at PowerBook shows that the line hasn't been played since 2009. Looking at the latest game in the line published in Informant reveals why.

I should say, though, that I don't memorize openings. I did that twenty years ago, and it led to more losses than wins. I seek to understand the moves, then I can usually find them when needed.

I do memorize whole games, especially games in openings that I play.

The opening is the initial stage of a chess game. It usually consists of established theory. The other phases are the middlegame and the endgame.[1] Many opening sequences, known as openings, have standard names such as "Sicilian Defense". The Oxford Companion to Chess lists 1,327 named openings and variants, and there are many others with varying degrees of common usage.[2]

Opening moves that are considered standard are referred to as "book moves", or simply "book".[3] When a game begins to deviate from known opening theory, the players are said to be "out of book".[3] In some openings, book lines have been worked out for over 30 moves, such as some lines in the classical King's Indian Defense and in the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defense.[4]

Professional chess players spend years studying openings, and they continue doing so throughout their careers as opening theory continues to evolve. Players at the club level also study openings, but the importance of the opening phase is less there since games are rarely decided in the opening. The study of openings can become unbalanced if it is to the exclusion of tactical training and middlegame and endgame strategy.[5]

A new sequence of moves in the opening is referred to as a theoretical novelty. When kept secret until used in a competitive game, it is often known as a prepared variation, a powerful weapon in top-class competition.[6]

Whether they are trying to gain the upper hand as White, or to equalize as Black or to create dynamic imbalances, players generally devote a lot of attention in the opening stages to the following strategies:[7]

Apart from these ideas, other strategies used in the middlegame may also be carried out in the opening. These include preparing pawn breaks to create counterplay, creating weaknesses in the opponent's pawn structure, seizing control of key squares, making favorable exchanges of minor pieces (e.g. gaining the bishop pair), or gaining a space advantage, whether in the center or on the flanks.

At higher levels of competition, for many years the main objectives of opening play were to obtain a better position when playing as White and to equalize when playing as Black. The idea behind this is that playing first gives White a slight initial advantage; for example, White will be the first to attack if the game opens symmetrically (Black mirrors White's moves).[7]

Since about the 1950s another objective has gradually become more dominant. According to IM Jeremy Silman, the purpose of the opening is to create dynamic imbalances between the two sides, which will determine the character of the middlegame and the strategic plans chosen by both sides.[11] For example, in the main line of the Winawer Variation of the French Defense (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3), White will try to use their bishop pair and space advantage to mount an attack on Black's kingside, while Black will seek simplifying exchanges (in particular, trading off one of White's bishops to blunt this advantage) and counterattack against the weakened pawns on White's queenside; both players accept different combinations of advantages and disadvantages. This idea was a doctrine of the Soviet school of chess.

A third objective, which is complementary to the previous ones and has been common since the 19th century, is to lure the opponent into positions with which the player is more familiar and comfortable than the opponent. This is usually done by transpositions, in which a game that apparently starts with one opening can reach a position that is normally produced by a different opening.[10]

Most players realize after a while that they play certain types of positions better than others, and that the amount of theory they can learn is limited. Therefore, most players specialize in certain openings where they know the theory and that lead to positions they favor.[12] The set of openings a player has specialized in is called an opening repertoire.[12] The main elements a player needs to consider in a repertoire are:

A very narrow repertoire allows for deeper specialization but also makes a player less flexible to vary against different opponents. In addition, opponents may find it easier to prepare against a player with a narrow repertoire.[13]

The main openings in a repertoire are usually reasonably sound; that is, they should lead to playable positions even against optimal counterplay. Unsound gambits are sometimes used as surprise weapons, but are unreliable for a stable repertoire. Repertoires often change as a player develops, and a player's advancement may be stifled if the opening repertoire does not evolve. Some openings that are effective against amateur players are less effective at the master level. For example, Black obtains active play in return for a pawn in the Benko Gambit; amateur players may have trouble defending against Black's activity, while masters are more skilled at defending and making use of the extra pawn. Some openings played between grandmasters are so complex and theoretical that amateur players will have trouble understanding them. An example is the Perenyi Attack of the Sicilian Defense (see diagram), which yields an immensely complicated and tactical position that even strong players have difficulty handling, and that is beyond the comprehension of most amateurs.[5]

Major changes in the rules of chess in the late fifteenth century increased the speed of the game, consequently emphasizing the importance of opening study. Thus, early chess books, such as the 1497 text of Luis Ramirez de Lucena, present opening analysis, as do Pedro Damiano (1512) and Ruy Lpez de Segura (1561). Ruy Lpez's disagreement with Damiano regarding the merits of 2...Nc6 led to 3.Bb5 (after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6) being named for him as the Ruy Lopez or Spanish Opening.[14] Opening theory was studied more scientifically from the 1840s on, and many opening variations were discovered and named in this period and later.

Opening nomenclature developed haphazardly, and most names are historical accidents not based on systematic principles. In the early 1930s, the nascent FIDE embarked on a project to standardize opening nomenclature, culminating in the publication of a short booklet in 1933, but this had little impact.[15]

The oldest openings tend to be named for geographic places and people. Many openings are named after nationalities of players who advocated them, for example Indian, English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Scotch, Russian, Italian, Scandinavian and Sicilian, or places where important games featuring the opening were played such as Vienna, Berlin, and Wilkes-Barre.[16] The Catalan System is named after the Catalonia region.

Some openings have been given fanciful names, often names of animals. This practice became more common in the 20th century. By then, most of the more common and traditional sequences of opening moves had already been named, so these tend to be unusual or recently developed openings like the Orangutan, Hippopotamus, Elephant, and Hedgehog. A few are given humorous names, such as the Monkey's Bum and the Toilet Variation.

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