If you are a current club chess player I have 3 questions for you… Have you been struggling to find an opening that suits you and your playing style? Has it become harder to get into winning positions with your current opening repertoire? Has playing the same opening resulted in boring, predictable middlegames?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, read on to discover your new favorite opening based on ChessBase’s win statistics!
Finding the right opening for you is a complicated and time-consuming process. You need to be objective, know yourself very well, and try to find positions that will suit your style.
If you are still looking to build a repertoire with white, but not sure which opening would suit you best, we are here to help! In this article, we are going to take a brief look at the English Opening and its characteristics.
If you have been playing chess for a while, you are probably familiar with the terms “evaluation” or “assessment” of the position. All variations in chess books and magazines end with an evaluation and you have surely heard players ending their lines with words like “white is slightly better” or “black is clearly better” or “this side has a decisive advantage”. Things may seem fairly simple when the evaluation is given to you by someone else, but it isn’t that easy in practice when you will have to do the same in your games, for example. Evaluating a position correctly is an important skill for a chess player, for a number of reasons.
Back in the 18th century, the famous chess player Francois Andre Danican Philidor was underlying the importance of the pawns and “playing them well”, concluding that “pawns are the soul of chess”. In the coming years, more and more strategical concepts were put together and nowadays we have a whole set of guidelines that help us understand important positional ideas.
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Do you wish you could find a more reliable Black opening?
Are you interested in learning a new defense against 1.e4 without much theory?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, we recommend you to take a look at the Czech Pirc: a solid, easy-to-learn opening bursting with potential for action!
Are you unsatisfied with your current Black opening? Have you felt lost when it comes to planning middlegame strategies?
Are you interested in learning a new defense against 1.d4? If you answered yes to any of these questions, I recommend you to take a look at the Chebanenko Slav: a solid, quiet opening bursting with potential for action!
Have you ever found yourself in middlegame positions with no idea of what to do next? Are you tired of having to play dull, boring games with way too many piece trades?
If so, TCW Academy introduces an exciting new course on the Minority Attack with FM Zaur Tekeyev. This course will push you to force pleasant positions for yourself while simultaneously developing weaknesses for your opponent.
Are you tired of having dull, defensive games as Black? Do you want to take charge of the course of your game?
If so, TCW recommends you to take a look at the Hyper Accelerated Dragon: an aggressive opening for Black that will keep White on his/her feet!
As Black, there are thousands of openings that you could learn and implement into your games, but the Hyper Accelerated Dragon offers a sharp, attacking reply within the Sicilian Defense.
BEWARE: this may change the entire trajectory of your chess career!
When you think about studying chess tactics—also known as chess puzzles—you may imagine a set of moves that transform some initial losing/neutral position to a significantly more winning one.
Though that is true, the reasons you should study them are not only to help you find those winning combinations of moves. In fact, thinking solely in that way will ruin your chess improvement and strategic thought by making you more prone to find “cheap tricks” to win.
