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Nowadays it is common knowledge that a good game preparation plays a major role in achieving success in over the board tournaments. Opening preparation has become a habit for any active player and many spend an impressive amount of hours before the game trying to find the right opening idea in order to get the opponent out of the known territory.

The surprise factor is very important in chess; your opponent might not find the best plan or sequence of moves over the board and, even if he/she does, he/she will probably use a lot of time in order to do so. You will most probably have a time advantage for the rest of the game and, knowing the position, it will be easier for you to continue once the known theory is over.

Opening preparation is a very important step in any player’s career. It is next to impossible to play high-level chess without a proper opening preparation. Almost all players realize that, but nevertheless they miss some very important yet extremely powerful ideas when it comes to the openings.  The good news is you won’t need to spend more time on your openings or forget everything you play and start from scratch. Using the following opening preparation “secrets” you will be able to take whatever you already know and have in terms of opening preparation and take it further. Let’s begin.

Following our previous article of aggressive openings suggestions for white, we will present now a few options to choose from when playing with the black pieces.

Of course, it can be more difficult to reach the type of position you want and start an attack early in the game when playing with black, but not impossible.

Below we have selected a few openings that can make white’s life more difficult and lead to complicated, sharp play!

In our previous articles, we have given a selection of systems [for white and for black] that could be played without having to learn much theory in order to focus on understanding the middlegame and endgames and raise your rating. In today’s article, we will list a few more aggressive openings, for those of you who like to get ready for an attack immediately right of the opening and try to put your opponent quickly under pressure. These openings work especially well if you catch your opponent unprepared and he doesn’t know how to react correctly to such set-ups.

In our previous article, we have given a selection of opening systems for white. Following the same pattern, we have thought of a few openings the club player can play with black. We have focused on systems that are solid and require less memorization than other purely theoretical lines. However, black doesn’t have the luxury of choice that white has and it is more difficult to rely only on strategic schemes and ideas. Here are our five choices for black.

However, black doesn’t have the luxury of choice that white has and it is more difficult to rely only on strategic schemes and ideas.

Here are our five choices for black.

In modern chess having a sound opening repertoire is an essential part of achieving success in tournaments. Professional players spend a lot of time working on the openings in depth, sometimes until the possible endgames that can arise. However, for the club players, spending so much time inserting the moves that are told by an engine and memorizing countless amount of lines is not only a waste of times, but it can also have a bad effect on their understanding of the game.

Scotch Game is a very interesting opening, especially for those club players’ strength [meaning under 2200]. It is a pretty rare opening which may either be used a surprise or a weapon of choice. White challenges the black center right away and ends up with an aggressive looking position. Black has his own pluses, including the exposed white’s queen in the center of the board and possibility of a rapid development.

The games are typically theoretically tense, and those with better opening preparation tend to succeed. Let’s take a look at some of the best classical games played on Scotch.

The London System has always been a sideline, far from the latest hype when it comes to opening trends. However, this is not the case anymore, for in the past 2-3 years, maybe more, thanks to the efforts put by Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and needless to say Gata Kamsky, the London has become just as dangerous and respectable as any other opening choice among the main lines of 1.d4 or 1.e4. Perhaps due to the so many analyzed lines, the world has found in the London the perfect opening to force your opponents to play by themselves, without the possibility of engine analysis or too relevant theoretical support.

The King’s Indian Defense is one of the most popular openings employed by Black against 1.d4. To a move with which white usually invites to a quiet and positional play, black responds with a set-up that most of the times lead to attacks against the white king. It is no secret that the King’s Indian Defense is normally employed by players who like to attack and are not afraid of complications. There are numerous ways and plans for White to respond to this opening and most of them require a lot of study and memorization.

The pawn structure in the diagram below is not an unfamiliar one to the average player.

As we all know, it can arise from different openings, mostly from those starting with 1.c4 or 1.d4 and Black responds with the King’s Indian Benoni-type of defense.