Openings

Ruy Lopez or as many people know it the Spanish game, is one of the most popular openings played on all levels. And, this course is dedicated to it. Here is how this opening starts: 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5

Bacrot Method’s creator is an extremely strong player with a wonderful chess career. Although for most of his career, he has been a 1.d4 player, Bacrot switches to 1.e4 every now and then. In previous articles, we have written about the importance of being practical in your opening choice. Following the sharp lines in the […]

Opening Repertoire: One of the most troubling decisions is to design your opening repertoire. The idea of having a perfect set of weapons against each of the opponent’s possible choices gives us peace of mind. However, there is a huge gap between how we picture this in our head and how it actually works in […]

Caro-Kann Structure Explained in Details: The pawn structure in the diagram above is very familiar in chess practice. It can arise from openings like Slav and Semi-Slav, Alekhine, Scandinavian, French, and of course Caro-Kann, the latter being the most common source of appearance. The special thing about such a structure is that although white has […]

7.Nd5 Against Sveshnikov Sicilian: For the first time since 2012, when Boris Gelfand used it as his mainstay weapon with Black after 1 e4 against Viswanathan Anand in their World Championship Match, the Sveshnikov Sicilian returned to the biggest scene in this year’s World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. In a curious […]

Queen’s Gambit and how to play against it. An easy guideline for club players against White’s most solid opening. Studying openings is a never-ending duty for the competitive chess player. Even when one has already decided on a repertoire, it is not unusual to develop an interest in learning new systems. Through the years I’ve […]

Rossolimo Sicilian and how is it a World Championship Choice? The World Championship match is always at the forefront of chess theory. The openings and variations played have been subjected to profound months-long study by teams of analysts supported by powerful hardware, meaning that they are of the highest quality.  This is understandable because nobody […]

Unpleasant Chess Openings: There comes a moment in every chess player’s game preparation when he is faced with a variation he would not really like to see on the board. Let us take as an example the situation when a King’s Indian player faces the prospect of playing against the Exchange Variation. In such a […]

Hedgehog is a Fabulous and Must-Have System for Every Chess Player. The black pawns resemble the spikes of a hedgehog, not letting white cross the 5th rank without getting hurt! The so-called Hedgehog System is one of those mysterious ways to play that captivate every chess player. There is a certain beauty in how one […]

Reti and its Double Fianchetto. In the computer era that we live in, where every opening is analyzed in detail and every chess player, regardless of their level, knows a fairly amount of theory, it is important to have in your opening arsenal a system that doesn’t require so much memorization and is based on […]