WGM Raluca Sgîrcea

The opening is nowadays probably one of the most studied of the three phases of the game. We have always said that there should be a balance between the time given to each of them in your training schedule and that it’s more important to get a good understanding of the game by studying a lot of classic games, as well as middlegame and endgame concepts and key positions. However, you shouldn’t misunderstand this.

In order to get to show your knowledge, you must first achieve a good position from the opening. What we mean is that, if you are a club player, it probably makes no sense to memorize a large number of complicated variations only to quickly collapse once the theory is over.

The Dutch Defense is a popular choice against 1.d4 among club players, although not that often seen at the top level. Nevertheless, it has been used by many strong players, such as ex-World Champions Alexandr Alekhine and Mikhail Botvinnik, Bent Larsen, Miguel Najdorf, Artur Yussupov, Nigel Short.

It has also been employed from time to time by players like Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen. There are many possible set-ups for black, but in this article, we are going to focus on the Stonewall System, a line where black gambles on an attack on the kingside and can be quite annoying for white if he’s not prepared to deal with it.

It is difficult nowadays to get a good game without having a fair amount of theory knowledge. There is no such thing as an easy game anymore, as almost everybody, as amateur as they are, knows openings. It is probably the most studied phase of the game and it’s important that you pass it successfully. In other words, you have to know as much as to get into at least a playable (if not slightly better) middlegame.

From our very first steps into chess studying we are taught about the importance of the initiative in the game – a concept somewhat difficult to understand at first glance and one that demands a certain degree of comprehension of the game. Let us start with the official definition of initiative; what is it exactly?

The initiative in chess belongs to the player who can make threats that cannot be ignored. This way, he puts the opponent to defend against these threats, not being able to make moves that accomplish a certain plan of his own.

What’s most popular than the King’s Indian Defense against 1.d4? Probably nothing. The King’s Indian Defense has a well-deserved reputation of spectacular battles often terminated with a massacre on White’s kingside castle. The philosophy behind this defense has always been the same, black plays a kingside fianchetto regardless of what white plays and then he attacks the center and depending on what kind of pawn structure arises black will attack one flank or the other, but the goal is the same black plays for the mate!

How many times do we lose a game or get a clearly worse position right out of the opening because we don’t know the secrets and hidden traps in it? As a beginner, it happens many times over the board and it seems like this the only way we had to learn them; the hard way, so to speak. Of course, this is always a difficult blow to digest; it’s a very bad feeling when we lose a game in only a few moves due to lack of theoretical knowledge or lack of awareness. Openings were a very tricky thing 20 years ago; now, thanks to the amount of information that is available to anyone, things are different. Not to mention that we now have a much better place to lose than in a tournament game – the online play.

The denominated Slav Defense begins after the moves 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 and is one of the most popular choices against the Queen’s Gambit. This defense bears its name due to the number of masters from Slavic countries that started developing it and introduced it into tournament practice. Some of them were Alekhine, Bogoljubow, and Vidmar. The Slav began to be taken seriously in the 1920s and to this day it is, without doubt, one of the toughest defenses to crack, if there is such possibility at all. This system is an ambitious one; black defends the center just as he would with 2…e6, but without shutting the diagonal for the c8 bishop.

One of the most popular defenses for black today against 1.d4, the Grunfeld, is employed by both top players and amateurs who like to play active and look for complications with the black pieces. Some of the strong players who have successfully used it are Vasily Smyslov, Viktor Korchnoi, Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov (in the match for the World title against Anatoly Karpov), Peter Svidler and Gata Kamsky. Nigel Short is another Grandmaster who has briefly used it with good results against Jonathan Speelman in the Candidates match in London in 1991.

From the very first moment we get into competitive chess we understand the importance of having a solid opening repertoire. However, once we set the goal of creating one, we realize it is not as easy as it seemed. Before getting to the complicated theoretical lines, you must decide on how to actually start the game. In order to do so, we recommend you evaluate well your playing style and the type of positions you prefer to play, see a lot of games and then choose the one that suits you best. In order to help you evaluate yourself better and make the right decision, in this article we are going to give you a few reasons why not to start with 1.d4.

Since we get started in chess we are hit by the ever-lasting decision of choosing our first move. I can’t speak for every chess player, but most of my generation started like that. Those with a positional inclination chose to play 1.d4 or 1.c4 while those with a feel for tactics invariably chose the move 1.e4.

Chess has now changed a lot and the eruption of powerful engines has changed all dogmas from the past in regards of how the opening is perceived.